HapticWalker - Haptic foot device for gait rehabilitation

Abstract

The restoration of gait for patients with impairments of the central nervous system (CNS), like, e.g., stroke, spinal cord injury (SCI) and traumatic brain injury (TBI) is an integral part of rehabilitation. The rehabilitation of CNS impairments usually takes several months at minimum and its outcome often influences whether a patient can return home or to work. Particularly stroke is the leading cause for disability in all industrialised countries; the incidence is approximately one million patients in the European Union each year [1, 2]. Modern concepts of motor learning favour a task specific training, i.e., to relearn walking, the patient should ideally train all walking movements, needed in daily life, repetitively in a physically correct manner [3]. Conventional training methods based on this approach proved to be effective, e.g., treadmill training [4], but they require great physical effort from the physiotherapists to assist the patient - so does even more training of free walking guided by at least two physiotherapists.