Rehabilitation Robotic System with Forelimb-Hindlimb Phase synchronization in Rats with Spinal Cord Injury

In our previous studies, the initial robotic system could only provide passive rehabilitation for spinally injured rats. To provide a more physiological walking gait, the robotic system is improved by synchronizing the gait between fore-limbs and hindlimbs. An improved phase learning is used to extract phases from movements in real time. An improved phase synchronization algorithm is proposed to control a rat's hindlimbs in synchronization with its forelimbs. To guarantee a phase synchronization performance of this robotic system, the RMS phase differences between the goal phase and the actual phase output from manipulators are quantified. Experimental results show that this approach has the potential to synchronize forelimbs movement with hindlimbs movement in real time as the RMS phase differences from our system are less than the variability of the walking phase difference from 14 healthy rats.