Contralateral Movement Constraint Based Gait Intervention Using a Powered Hip Exoskeleton

Abstract

Hemiparetic gait patterns of stroke survivors has been widely focused on nowadays with various robot-assist gait intervention approaches. In this paper, we use a powered hip exoskeleton to provide resistance on one side of the wearer during walking and explored the variation of the other side of the lower limb in kinematics, ground reaction forces, and EMG signals. The preliminary results on healthy adults indicated that the difference in hip joint angles, EMG area under the curve, co-contraction index, and synergy weight were observed under the contra-lateral intervention. This study shows potentials that powered hip exoskeleton-induced non-hemiplegic side constraints may be a new rehabilitation way for stroke patients in the near future.