1138 Development of Intelligent Ankle Foot Orthosis: iAFO : Conceptual design and prototyping
Details
An ankle-foot orthosis (AFO) is a primal aid for patients with gait disorder, and the mechanical characteristics of AFO joint directly affect the walking function. In this article, considered are the necessity of AFO joint characteristics changing automatically during a gait cycle and the control scheme of such an AFO joint so that the wearers can train/reorganize their orthotic gaits towards the goals designated by their own physiotherapists in relief/safety. A teaching-playback scheme is employed, and the initial joint characteristics are determined for each of the swing phase, the initial stance phase and the mid-terminal stance. We prototyped an intelligent AFO with gait pattern sensors and a controller adjusting the magnet position for MR-fluid brake.
