The successful motor rehabilitation of stroke, traumatic brain/spinal cord/sport injured patients requires a highly intensive and task-specific therapy based approach. Significant budget, time and logistic constraints limits a direct hand-to-hand therapy app-roach, so that intelligent assistive machines may offer a solution to promote motor recovery and obtain a better understanding of human motor control. This paper will address the development of a lower limb exo-skeleton legs for force augmentation and active assistive walking training. The twin wearable legs are po-wered by Pneumatic Muscle Actuators (pMAs), an experimental low mass high power to weight and volume ac-tuation system. In addition, the pMA being pneumatic produces a more natural muscle like contact and as such can be considered a soft and biomimetic actuation system. This capacity to “replicate” the function of natural muscle and inherent safety is extremely important when working in close proximity to humans.The in-tegration of the components sections and testing of the performance will also be considered to show how the structure and actuators can be combined to produce the various systems needed for a highly flexible/low weight clinically viable rehabilitation exoskeleton.

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The gait-locomotor apparatus of the present invention is a device for overcoming impeded locomotion in humans and is aimed at enabling people with handicapped lower limbs to walk. The gait-locomotor apparatus that is wore on a disabled user comprises a brace having a plurality of jointed segments that are adapted to fit the lower body of the disabled user and propulsion means that is adapted to provide relative movement between the plurality of jointed segments. The gait-locomotor apparatus further comprises at least one sensor adapted to monitor the angular position of at least one of the plurality of jointed segments and a control unit that is adapted to supervise the propulsion means and to receive feedback information from the sensors so as to facilitate the brace to perform walking patterns. The disabled user that wears the gait-locomotor apparatus of the present invention is able to steadily stand in a stance position supported by the brace, and is able to walk in various walking patterns using the control unit while fully participating in the process.

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There is provided an activity recognition apparatus for detecting an activity of a subject. The apparatus includes: a sensor unit including a plurality of linear motion sensors configured to detect linear motions and a plurality of rotational motion sensors, the linear motions being orthogonal to each other, the rotational motions being orthogonal to each other; and a computational unit configured to receive and process signals from the sensors included in the sensor unit so as to detect an activity of the subject. The sensor unit is directly or indirectly supported by the subject with an arbitrary orientation with respect to the subject. The computational unit performs a calculation that uses the signals from both linear motion sensors and rotational motion sensors to determine the activity of the subject independent of the orientation of the sensor unit.

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Two medical engineering projects will be presented that are in the field of motor rehabilitation after stroke. The first project focuses on the restitution of hand and finger movements. The concept is the generation of proprioceptive afferent input by position controlled muscle stimulation. As innovative stimulation method the Repetitive Peripheral Magnetic Stimulation (RPMS) is used. Secondly, a novel control method (Complementary Limb Motion Estimation, CLME) for automated treadmill training for hemiparetic patients is presented. CLME deduces reference motion for the impaired limbs based on the contra-lateral leg. This method aims to increase the patient’s involvement and dominance during rehabilitation, while the robot acts as an assistive slave.

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Исследователи из института нанотехнологий при Техасском университете в Далласе (Nanotech Institute at the University of Texas at Dallas — NIUTD) создали искусственные мышцы, которые в сто раз сильнее обыкновенных «природных». Для этого учёные использовали необычный материал — пряжу из углеродных нанотрубок.

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