Nonhuman test of a new active body support system for improving locomotion training

This paper describes the results of a nonhuman test of the concept of a new active body-weight support (BWS) system for improving treadmill-based locomotion rehabilitation. The BWS system can offload not only partial body weight but also partial body mass and thus reduce the dynamic load of the patient who is supported by the system during locomotion training. Due to safety requirements, a cam-slider based testbed has been designed to facilitate the nonhuman test of the new BWS method before human subject testing is developed. The nonhuman test results demonstrated that the new method performs satisfactorily as designed for.