Oscillator-based walking assistance: A model-free approach

9 years. What happened with this? Since we have no database of stroke research and protocols this is lost to the sands of time. 

Oscillator-based walking assistance: A model-free approach

2011, … ICORR), 2011 IEEE …
 Renaud Ronsse•Tommaso Lenzi•Nicola Vitiello•Bram Koopman•Edwin van Asseldonk•Stefano Marco Maria De Rossi•Jesse van den Kieboom•Herman van der Kooij•Maria Chiara Carrozza•Auke Jan Ijspeert
Received: 23 February 2011/Accepted: 30 July 2011
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International Federation for Medical and Biological Engineering 2011

Abstract

In this article, we propose a new method for providing assistance during cyclical movements. This method is trajectory-free, in the sense that it provides user assistance irrespective of the performed movement, and requires no other sensing than the assisting robot’s own encoders. The approach is based on adaptive oscillators,i.e., mathematical tools that are capable of learning the high level features (frequency, envelope, etc.) of a periodic input signal. Here we present two experiments that we recently conducted to validate our approach: a simple sinusoidal movement of the elbow, that we designed as a proof-of-concept, and a walking experiment. In both cases,we collected evidence illustrating that our approach indeed assisted healthy subjects during movement execution.Owing to the intrinsic periodicity of daily life movements involving the lower-limbs, we postulate that our approach holds promise for the design of innovative rehabilitation and assistance protocols for the lower-limb, requiring little to no user specific calibration.