Low-cost Electromechanical Bionic Model for Foot Drop Gait Disability

Abstract

Based on reports of the World Health organization there are billion people around the world suffer from disability. Foot drop is a gait abnormality in which a dropping of the forefoot causes a difficulty in lifting the front part of the foot. Unfortunately, large number of existing mechanical models for gait are integrated with another machines, i.e. treadmills or other platforms, which make it impossible to get benefit of using them as portable systems. And as wearable rehabilitation robotic systems or bionic models for personal use - specially for gait rehabilitation and drop foot - are still rare, an electro-mechanical design is introduced here to be a simple and wearable bionic model to help patients with foot drop in walking. The proposed design contains low-cost stepper motor and controller to facilitate patient movement. Stress, strain and displacement analysis were performed on the model using the von Mises finite element analysis, and by applying a 20 kg load on the front area of the foot model the analysis produced a maximum yield strength of 2.0052×108N.m−2 and a maximum displacement of 1.00371 mm.