Gait Interventions with Partial Body-weight Support, a Split-belt Treadmill, and Functional Electrical Stimulation

—Novel Gait-training Platform and Preliminary Evidence—

Abstract

Current robotic therapy for lower extremities is in its early stage of development. Aiming at exploring an efficacious intervention for gait rehabilitation, we investigate the gait-training device that combines saddle-seat-type body-weight support (BWS), a split-belt treadmill and functional electrical stimulation (FES). The task-oriented approach to restoring voluntary control of locomotion in patients with neuromuscular diseases focuses on three gait functions: (a) balancing, (b) hip extension, and (c) ankle push-off. The two gait functions of (a) and (b) are supported/trained by end-effector intervention combining the saddle-seat-type BWS and a split-belt treadmill, and another function of (c) is supported/trained by muscle intervention electrically stimulating ankle plantar flexion muscles. We evaluate the differences between walking with saddle-seat-type BWS and with harness-type BWS, in terms of the preferred walking speed, profiles of kinematics and ground reaction force, and the effectiveness of FES. The results indicate that the proposed gait-training device maintains subjects in a natural posture and supports important gait functions such as hip extension and ankle push-off effectively, in particular, at slow walking speed. The combined use of saddle-seat-type BWS treadmill training and FES has great potential for the next generation of neurorehabilitation technologies.