Walking assistance of subjects with spinal cord injury with an ankle exoskeleton and neuromuscular controller

M. Arquilla, I. Pisotta, F. Tamburella, N.L. Tagliamonte*, M. Masciullo, A.R. Wu, C. Meijneke, H. van der Kooij, A.J. IJspeert, M. Molinari

*Corresponding author for this work

    Research output: Chapter in Book/Report/Conference proceedingChapterAcademicpeer-review

    Abstract

    This work was devoted to preliminary test the Achilles ankle exoskeleton and its NeuroMuscular Controller (NMC) with a test pilot affected by incomplete spinal cord injury. The customization of the robot controller, i.e. a subject-specific tailoring of the assistance level, was performed and a 10-session training to optimize human-robot interaction was finalized. Results demonstrated that controller tuning was in line with the functional clinical assessment. NMC adapted to the variable walking speed during the training and the test pilot was successfully trained in exploiting robotic support and also improved his performance in terms of walking speed and stability. After the training, a higher speed could also be achieved during free walking and hence a slight unexpected rehabilitation effect was evidenced.

    Original languageEnglish
    Title of host publicationWearable Robotics
    Subtitle of host publicationchallenges and trends
    PublisherSpringer
    Pages304-308
    Number of pages5
    ISBN (Electronic)978-3-030-01887-0
    ISBN (Print)978-3-030-01886-3
    DOIs
    Publication statusPublished - 1 Jan 2019

    Publication series

    NameBiosystems and Biorobotics
    Volume22
    ISSN (Print)2195-3562
    ISSN (Electronic)2195-3570

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