Robotic Knee Orthosis for Hemiplegic Patients to Prevent Falls During Walking Rehabilitation

Walking disturbance is one of the dysfunctions caused by stroke. In walking rehabilitation, it is common to shift to an ankle-foot-orthosis after using a knee-ankle-foot-orthosis for patients with stroke. However, there exist such danger of falling due to knee bending. The purpose of this research is to develop a robotic knee orthosis for hemiplegic patients to prevent falls. The equipment prevents falling by locking the knee joint when knee bending occurs. We analyzed the falling motion according to knee bending and designed the control system focusing on the result that the speed of the center of gravity in the traveling direction becomes zero. In the experiments, we demonstrated the effectiveness of the proposed method by reproducing the knee bending during walking of a healthy subject. As the result, it was demonstrated that the device was operating before the knee bending occurs and it was possible to prevent falls.