A Study on Simultaneous Use of a Robotic Walker and a Pneumatic Walking Assist Device Designed for PD Patients
This addresses gait impairments for Parkinson's disease patients, but it is incremental as it combines existing assistive technologies.
The study tackled the problem of postural instability and freezing of gait in Parkinson's disease patients by investigating the simultaneous use of a robotic walker and a pneumatic walking assist device, finding that it increased stride length and decreased stance phase duration to suppress freezing of gait and maintain stable gait patterns.
Parkinson's disease (PD) is a common neurodegenerative disease that affects motor and non-motor symptoms. Postural instability and freezing of gait (FOG) are considered motor symptoms of PD resulting in falling. In this study, we investigated the effect of simultaneous use of a robotic walker and a pneumatic walking assist device (PWAD) for PD patients on gait features. The pneumatic actuated artificial muscle on the leg and actuators on the walker produce mutual induced stimulation, allowing the user to suppress FOG and maintain a stable gait pattern while walking. The performance of the proposed system was evaluated by conducting an 8 [m] straight-line walking task by a healthy subject with (a) RW (robotic walker), (b) simultaneous use of an RW and a PWAD, and some gait features for each condition were analyzed. The increasing stride length and decreasing stance phase duration in the gait cycle suggest that simultaneous use of a robotic walker and a pneumatic walking assist device would effectively decrease FOG and maintain a stable gait pattern for PD patients.