| Summary: | Walking impairments are a common sequela of
neurological injury, severely affecting the quality of life of both
adults and children. Gait therapy is the traditional approach to
ameliorate the problem by re-training the nervous system and
there have been some attempts to mechanize such approach. In
this paper, we present a novel device to deliver gait therapy,
which, in contrast to previous approaches, takes advantage of
the concept of passive walkers and the natural dynamics of the
lower extremity in order to deliver more “ecological” therapy.
We also discuss the closed-loop control scheme, which enables
safe and efficient operation of the device, and present the initial
feasibility tests with unimpaired subjects.
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