Proposal of Rolling Type Training Walker with Gait Handling Device

In a recovery rehabilitation unit, a gait training is carried out for a patient with a lower-limb disease. However, sufficient rehabilitation training has not been provided for patients who need effective gait training due to a lack of PT and short training time. To cope with the issues, in this paper, a rolling standing-up training walker aiming to “consistent gait rehabilitation” is proposed. The preliminary experiment to investigate the influence of the upper extremities load on the pelvic motion was conducted. The results showed that the pelvic movement was not significantly affected by the load of the upper extremities. This indicates that a gait handling with an assistive device is applicable. A gait assist force by a PT was measured to obtain the information in designing the gait handling device. Finally, the prototype of the training walker with the gait handling device and the upper extremities load.measurement device was proposed. The stiffness control without force sensors was implemented to the handling device and confirmed its effectiveness through experiments.