Passive Swing Assistive Exoskeletons for Motor-Incomplete Spinal Cord Injury Patients

—In this paper, we present a passive device for swing assistance of motor-incomplete spinal cord injury patients. This device is aimed at reducing the physical demands on the therapists during treadmill training. We model the human leg as two links and a point foot mass, with a moving trunk. We employ passive elements in the design which get charged by the treadmill. Using the system dynamics, we optimize the design parameters to obtain a feasible swing motion of the leg. An exoskeleton was constructed based on these design parameters and tests were performed on a healthy subject at different treadmill speeds.

• Type: Conference
• Year: 2007
• Where: ICRA
• Authors: Kalyan K. Mankala, Sai K. Banala, Sunil Kumar Agrawal
• Keywords: Design Parameters, ICRA 2007, Motor-incomplete Spinal Cord, Robotics, Treadmill Training