Development of pendulum-type crutch walk training device considering walking condition

Abstract

Patients who temporarily use crutches may have secondary accidents such as falls due to lack of crutch walking skills. To reduce such a possibility, a device that presents a sensation to be falling was proposed. By training the patient with the device, it is expected that the possibility of a secondary accident would be reduced. A step of a crutch walk motion can be divided into six phases, i.e. , early, middle and late of swing phases and those of stance phases. If the phase in which a crutch user tends to lose the bodily balance easily is identified, a training can be provided specifically for that period. In this paper, we investigated the crutch walk motions through experiments, and its result shows that a training had better be provided for the swing phase.