An Omnidirectional Assistive Platform Integrated With Functional Electrical Stimulation for Gait Rehabilitation: A Case Study

This paper presents a novel omnidirectional platform for gait rehabilitation of people with hemiparesis after stroke. The mobile platform, henceforth the “walker”, allows unobstructed pelvic motion during walking, helps the user maintain balance and prevents falls. The system aids mobility actively by combining three types of therapeutic intervention: forward propulsion of the pelvis, controlled body weight support, and functional electrical stimulation (FES) for compensation of deficits in angular motion of the joints. FES is controlled using gait data extracted from a set of inertial measurement units (IMUs) worn by the user. The resulting closed-loop FES system synchronizes stimulation with the gait cycle phases and automatically adapts to the variations in muscle activation caused by changes in residual muscle activity and spasticity. A pilot study was conducted to determine the potential outcomes of the different interventions. One chronic stroke survivor underwent five sessions of gait training, each one involving a total of 30 minutes using the walker and FES system. The patient initially exhibited severe anomalies in joint angle trajectories on both the paretic and the non-paretic side. With training, the patient showed progressive increase in cadence and self-selected gait speed, along with consistent decrease in double-support time. FES helped correct the paretic foot angle during swing phase, and likely was a factor in observed improvements in temporal gait symmetry. Although the experiments showed favorable changes in the paretic trajectories, they also highlighted the need for intervention on the non-paretic side.