Deans' stroke musings: Bionic legs give soldiers a boost

Changing stroke rehab and research worldwide now.Time is Brain! trillions and trillions of neurons that DIE each day because there are NO effective hyperacute therapies besides tPA(only 12% effective). I have 523 posts on hyperacute therapy, enough for researchers to spend decades proving them out. These are my personal ideas and blog on stroke rehabilitation and stroke research. Do not attempt any of these without checking with your medical provider. Unless you join me in agitating, when you need these therapies they won't be there.

What this blog is for:

My blog is not to help survivors recover, it is to have the 10 million yearly stroke survivors light fires underneath their doctors, stroke hospitals and stroke researchers to get stroke solved. 100% recovery. The stroke medical world is completely failing at that goal, they don't even have it as a goal. Shortly after getting out of the hospital and getting NO information on the process or protocols of stroke rehabilitation and recovery I started searching on the internet and found that no other survivor received useful information. This is an attempt to cover all stroke rehabilitation information that should be readily available to survivors so they can talk with informed knowledge to their medical staff. It lays out what needs to be done to get stroke survivors closer to 100% recovery. It's quite disgusting that this information is not available from every stroke association and doctors group.

Saturday, September 24, 2011

Bionic legs give soldiers a boost - maybe for stroke?

If only we could shift all this research from military to stroke rehab we could actually get somewhere. But someone could adapt this to helping stroke patients walk.
http://news.bbc.co.uk/2/hi/science/nature/3502194.st

US researchers have developed strap-on robotic legs to allow people to carry heavy loads over long distances.

The Berkeley Lower Extremity Exoskeleton, or Bleex, is part of a US defence project designed to be used mainly by infantry soldiers.

The device consists of a pair of mechanical metal leg braces including a power unit and a backpack-like frame.

More than 40 sensors and hydraulic mechanisms calculate how to distribute weight just like the nervous system.

These help minimise the load for the wearer.

A large rucksack carried on the back contains an engine, control system and space for a payload.

"There is no joystick, no keyboard, no push button to drive the device," said Homayoon Kazerooni, director of the Robotics and Human Engineering Laboratory at the University of California.

Brace yourself

The Bleex exoskeleton has a small, purpose-built combustion engine built into it. On a full tank the system should be able to run for up to two hours.

The device's leg braces are attached to a modified pair of army boots and connected to the user's legs.

In the lab, subjects have walked around in the 45kg (100 lbs) exoskeleton plus a 31.5kg (70 lbs) backpack and reported that it felt like they were carrying little over 2kg (5 lbs).

"The design of this exoskeleton really benefits from human intellect and the strength of the machine," said Dr Kazerooni.

The project has been funded by the US Defense Advanced Research Projects Agency (Darpa).

But Dr Kazerooni thinks the exoskeleton could be used with equal success by firefighters.

"They're really good, it turns out, at enabling firefighters, soldiers, post-disaster rescue crews to carry heavy loads over great distances for hours," he said.