Increasing evidence suggests that locomotor training can greatly improve human walking ability after neurological injury (Barbeau et al. 1998). After stroke or spinal cord injury, treadmill stepping with manual assistance and partial body weight support facilitates re-learning how to walk. However, manual assistance is labor intensive and highly variable from therapist to therapist. A lightweight powered lower limb orthosis that can assist locomotor training would decrease labor requirements and provide more con-sistent therapy. In addition, a powered orthosis would also provide the means to design controlled motor learning studies on human locomotion. Thus, we designed a pneumatically powered, myoelectrically controlled ankle-foot orthosis as a tool for rehabilitation and
studying human locomotor adaptation.

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