Patient simulator using wearable robot to estimate the burden of knee-osteoarthritis patients during sitting-down and standing-up motions

The estimation of the physical burdens from which people with motor impairment suffer helps us establish welfare techniques comprising personal care equipment and assessment of critical risks, such as fall risks. However, the involvement of actual patients in the evaluation and development of this equipment is costly and involves the exposure of patients to long and exhausting experiments. To solve this problem, we developed a robot wearable by a healthy person and the associated control algorithm to simulate typical motions of patients with knee osteoarthritis, which is a common symptom for the elderly and causes pain during movement. To estimate the physical burdens inflicted by knee malfunctions, we computed the knee flexion and extension moment of the simulated patient during the standing-up and sitting-down motions. The moments, estimated under certain conditions, are qualitatively consistent with those considered clinically, which corroborates the validity of our patient simulation techniques.