Wearable Auditory Biofeedback Device for Blind and Sighted Individuals

GaitEcho is a wearable auditory biofeedback device that uses an instrumented ankle-foot orthosis for gait rehabilitation. The authors investigated its feasibility for rehabilitating sighted and blind individuals by employing a reference-tracking task for an ankle-joint exercise. Experimental results suggest that GaitEcho offers similarly adequate functionality (angle controllability, timing controllability, and task difficulty) for both blind and sighted participants in conducting ankle-joint exercises. Furthermore, blind participants reported higher understandability and enjoyment than sighted participants, suggesting positive emotional effect of auditory biofeedback for blind users.