Development of Active Gait Orthosis for Hybrid Assistive System with FES

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So as to restore walking of paraplegic patients, we have designed an assisting cart which cooperates with functional electrical stimulation. A new stimulation device has also been developed to generate more adaptive patterns of stimulation signals. The basic performance of the assisting cart was evaluated experimentally. We confirmed that the cart is more adjustable than conventional walkers. The adjustment to each patient can be carried out by using proposed methods for indentifying dynamic parameters of lower extremities. Sensing devices for estimating a timing of a prespecified motion were developed so that the user feels well with the proposed adjustment method and the required muscle forces are reduced by the active assisting forces. Practical assistive systems will be developed in near future based on these results. Specially, the proposed methods for adjusting the system to each patient and the know-how with respect to the developed actuators and sensors will be useful for the practical design.