A novel passive pelvic device for assistance during locomotion

Author

Mokhtarian, A. ; Fattah, A. ; Agrawal, S.K.

Author_Institution

Dept. of Mech. Eng., Isfahan Univ. of Technol., Isfahan, Iran

fYear

2010

fDate

3-7 May 2010

Firstpage

2241

Lastpage

2246

Abstract

A large number of people suffer from impairments, such as injury to joints or the spinal cord, that limit motion of the pelvis. This motion plays an important role in balance and propulsion during a gait cycle. In this work, we present a method to design a passive device that assists the pelvis to move close to a reference trajectory during walking with partial body support. This device is un-motorized and contains only passive elements. In this paper, we model subjects with different ability levels and body weight support and determine optimum design parameters for the device. The simulation results show the configuration of the optimum device and time trajectories of pelvic rotations in comparison to the reference.

Keywords

gait analysis; handicapped aids; legged locomotion; patient rehabilitation; gait cycle; gait rehabilitation; joint impairment; leg locomotion; partial body support; passive pelvic device; spinal cord impairment; wired robot; Cameras; Educational technology; Geometry; Image segmentation; Intelligent robots; Layout; Pattern matching; Photometry; Robotics and automation; USA Councils;

fLanguage

English

Publisher

ieee

Conference_Titel

Robotics and Automation (ICRA), 2010 IEEE International Conference on

Conference_Location

Anchorage, AK

ISSN

1050-4729

Print_ISBN

978-1-4244-5038-1

Electronic_ISBN

1050-4729

Type

conf

DOI

10.1109/ROBOT.2010.5509476

Filename

5509476