1B22 Development of the hybrid gait training machine by using motor and functional electrical stimulation

It was reported that the body-weight supported treadmill training (BWSTT) is efficient as a rehabilitation for paraparesis and stroke patients in 1990s. BWSTT has been showed to be effective in gait reconstruction, but it has some problems; BWSTT is necessary 2 or more physical therapists and the stepping action makes therapists laborious work. Recently, Robot-Aided gait trainer has been developed to resolve these problems and in practical use is proceeding. Most of that consist of weight bearing device, treadmill, and orthosis that has actuators on hip joint and knee joint. Most of control method of actuators are tracking joint trajectories that instituted beforehand, so that it is decreased that opportunity that patients exert muscle power actively. Therefore it is being advocated that gait training by trajectory tracking might reduce efficient of rehabilitation. Also recently functional electrical stimulation (FES) have been studied. FES is treatment that reconstruct limb motion by stimulate peripheral muscles using electrical current from external to contract muscle, FES makes patients to contract his own muscle, therefore muscular hypertrophy is expected. However, in FES, generated muscle strength is not be steadied and it is difficult to keep posture using joint and ligament. In this study, we have developed a repetitive gait trainer for hemiplegic patients with a combination of actuator and FES. In addition, we report that actually performs a gait training healthy persons as subjects and confirms the operation and analysis of the device.