Development of Geriatric Rehab Device based on Gait Feedback for Arthritis Pain Management

In this work, an attempt has been made to develop an assistive device for elderly people suffering from joint pain caused by arthritis. With aging, knee joint becomes stiffer and this could be caused by various factors such as infections, cartilage damage or autoimmune diseases. The conventional treatment modalities require extensive physical training and the expenses are quite high for elderly population to maintain healthy knees. During walking, arthritis causes severe pain and hence patient finds it difficult to maintain proper posture. In order to provide cost effective physiotherapy, a rehabilitation device is developed as walking support to assist the elderly person affected with arthritis. This device will monitor the foot pressure of the patient using the piezoelectric plate attached to the shoe which is worn in the affected leg. Knee orthosis embedded with vibrator motor is attached to the affected leg of the patient. The controller module consists of bridge rectifier and Arduino UNO microcontroller. The gait feedback from shoe will be used to adjust the vibration provided to the knee joint which provides pain relief during stance phase of the gait cycle. Results show that the voltage generated from the piezoelectric plate depends on the foot pressure and the weight of the patient. Hence, this rehabilitation device could provide cost effective personalized physiotherapy for the geriatric population affected by arthritis.