The end-effector device for gait rehabilitation

Abstract

Today’s concepts of motor learning address the demand for adequate therapy solutions with a task-specific approach. Since the 1990s, robot-assisted gait training (RAGT) has become a promising approach, alongside conventional rehabilitation, for treating gait disturbances in patients with neurological disease. RAGT devices enable the patient to practice an intensive, repetitive and assisted gait-like movement and have been found to improve mobility and independence in activities of daily living (Sale et al. in Eur J Phys Rehabil Med 48:111–21, 2012, [31]). On the basis of their driving principles, robotic devices for gait rehabilitation can be divided into two categories: exoskeleton and end-effector robots (Mehrholz and Pohl in J Rehabil Med 44:193–9, 2012, [20]). The former, extensively described elsewhere in this book, consist of treadmill-centered technology combined with an exoskeleton and a body weight support system. The latter represent an alternative approach in which footplates are used to guide the feet and thereby reproduce the gait trajectory.