Design and construction of a crawl stimulator to improve the motor skills in babies and children

Abstract

The correct development of crawl and gait in infants is vital for their motor development. The development of a crawl and gait stimulator, which can be used with infants from 6 months to 2 years old, is important as it might significantly improve the development of their motor skills. The objective of our crawl and gait stimulator was to encourage the development of motor skills in infants using visual incentives in an interactive manner. Here we introduce the design and construction of a crawl and gait stimulator that was tested with infants with gross motor skill disabilities (i.e. Down syndrome or cerebral palsy). This stimulator consists of an electromechanical system and a software controller. The electro-mechanical system is made of a compliant pad with several compression modules connected in sequence. We designed four independent compression sequences termed as path sequences. Each path sequence consisted of compression modules, and each module consisted of a 30 Newtons compression sensor developed in-house connected to eight LEDs. When one path sequence is activated, the infant crawled following it while turning the lights off as the infant compressed the sensors until the infant reached the end of the sequence. We found that the infants with motor system pathologies completed the path sequence in a significantly shorter time when the stimulator was activated. The stimulator completion time was compared to the time to complete the same path using traditional stimulation regimes. Our system proved to be an effective stimulation device to improve the skills of infants with motor skill pathologies in a fun, safe, and efficient manner.