Patient Simulator Using Wearable Robot to Estimate Knee-OA Patient's Burden during Sitting-down and Standing-up Motions

Abstract

Estimation of physical burdens that people with motor impairment suffer from aids us to establish welfare techniques and systems comprising personal care equipment and assessment of critical risks such as fall. We developed a wearable robot for a healthy person and its control algorithm to simulate the representative motions of knee osteoarthritis patients. We then calculated the knee exion and extension moment of the simulated patient during standing-up and sitting-down motions to estimate the physical burdens of incurred by the knee malfunctions.The burdens estimated under some conditions qualitatively match those clinically considered, which corroborates the validity of our patient simulation techniques.