TY - JOUR
T1 - Variable Damping Force Tunnel for Gait Training Using ALEX III
AU - Stegall, Paul
AU - Zanotto, Damiano
AU - Agrawal, Sunil K.
N1 - Publisher Copyright:
© 2017 IEEE.
PY - 2017/7
Y1 - 2017/7
N2 - Haptic feedback not only affects the quality of training but can also influence the physical design of robotic gait trainers by determining how much force needs to be applied to the user and the nature of the force. This letter presents the design of a variable damping force tunnel and explores the effect of the shape and strength of the damping field using ALEX III, a treadmill-based exoskeleton developed at Columbia University. The study consists of 32 healthy subjects who were trained for 40 min in the device. The subjects were trained to follow a footpath with a 50% increase in step height, so the foot would have 1.5 times the ground clearance. Subjects were assigned to one of four groups: linear high, linear low, parabolic high, and parabolic low. Linear or parabolic denotes the shape of the damping field, and high or low denotes the rate of change (strength) of the field based on error. It is shown that the new controller is capable of inducing gait adaptations in healthy individuals while walking in the device. All groups showed adaptations in step height, while only the high strength groups showed changes in normalized error area, a measure of how closely the desired path was followed.
AB - Haptic feedback not only affects the quality of training but can also influence the physical design of robotic gait trainers by determining how much force needs to be applied to the user and the nature of the force. This letter presents the design of a variable damping force tunnel and explores the effect of the shape and strength of the damping field using ALEX III, a treadmill-based exoskeleton developed at Columbia University. The study consists of 32 healthy subjects who were trained for 40 min in the device. The subjects were trained to follow a footpath with a 50% increase in step height, so the foot would have 1.5 times the ground clearance. Subjects were assigned to one of four groups: linear high, linear low, parabolic high, and parabolic low. Linear or parabolic denotes the shape of the damping field, and high or low denotes the rate of change (strength) of the field based on error. It is shown that the new controller is capable of inducing gait adaptations in healthy individuals while walking in the device. All groups showed adaptations in step height, while only the high strength groups showed changes in normalized error area, a measure of how closely the desired path was followed.
KW - Haptics and haptic interfaces
KW - prosthetics and exoskeletons
KW - rehabilitation robotics
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U2 - 10.1109/LRA.2017.2671374
DO - 10.1109/LRA.2017.2671374
M3 - Article
AN - SCOPUS:85044453005
VL - 2
SP - 1495
EP - 1501
JO - IEEE Robotics and Automation Letters
JF - IEEE Robotics and Automation Letters
IS - 3
M1 - 7858669
ER -