Sensors, Vol. 20, Pages 5876: Wearable Biofeedback Improves Human-Robot Compliance during Ankle-Foot Exoskeleton-Assisted Gait Training: A Pre-Post Controlled Study in Healthy Participants

Sensors, Vol. 20, Pages 5876: Wearable Biofeedback Improves Human-Robot Compliance during Ankle-Foot Exoskeleton-Assisted Gait Training: A Pre-Post Controlled Study in Healthy Participants Sensors doi: 10.3390/s20205876 Authors: Cristiana Pinheiro Joana Figueiredo Nuno Magalhães Cristina P. Santos The adjunctive use of biofeedback systems with exoskeletons may accelerate post-stroke gait rehabilitation. Wearable patient-oriented human-robot interaction-based biofeedback is proposed to improve patient-exoskeleton compliance regarding the interaction torque’s direction (joint motion strategy) and magnitude (user participation strategy) through auditory and vibrotactile cues during assisted gait training, respectively. Parallel physiotherapist-oriented strategies are also proposed such that physiotherapists can follow in real-time a patient’s motor performance towards effective involvement during training. A preliminary pre-post controlled study was conducted with eight healthy participants to conclude about the biofeedback’s efficacy during gait training driven by an ankle-foot exoskeleton and guided by a technical person. For the study group, performance related to the interaction torque’s direction increased during (p-value = 0.07) and after (p-value = 0.07) joint motion training. Further, the performance regarding the interaction torque’s magnitude significantly increased during (p-value = 0...
Source: Sensors - Category: Biotechnology Authors: Tags: Article Source Type: research