Background: Hemiparesis after stroke often leads to impaired ankle motor control that impacts gait function. In recent studies, robotic devices have been developed to address this impairment. While capable of imparting forces to assist during training and gait, these devices add mass to the paretic leg which might encumber patients’ gait pattern. The purpose of this study was to assess the effects of the added mass of one of these robots, the MIT’s Anklebot, while unpowered, on gait of chronic stroke sur-vivors during overground and treadmill walking. Methods: Nine chronic stroke survivors walked overground and on a treadmill with and without the anklebot mounted on the paretic leg. Gait parameters, interlimb symmetry, and joint kinematics were collected for the four conditions. Repeated-measures analysis of variance (ANOVA) tests were conducted to examine for possible differences across four conditions for the paretic and nonparetic leg. Results: The added inertia and friction of the unpowered anklebot had no statis-tically significant effect on spatiotemporal parameters of gait, including paretic and nonparetic step time and stance percen-tage, in both overground and treadmill conditions. Noteworthy, interlimb symmetry as characterized by relative stance duration was grea-ter on the treadmill than overground regardless of loading conditions. The presence of the unpowered robot loading reduced the non-paretic knee peak flexion on the treadmill and paretic peak dorsiflexion overground (p < 0.05). Conclusions: Our results suggest that for these subjects the added inertia and friction of this backdriveable robot did not significantly alter their gait pattern. (далее…)

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Разработчики экзоскелета для американской армии передали его военным на полевые испытания. Для непосредственного участия в боевых действиях создаваемый корпорацией Lockheed Martin экзоскелет не предназначен.

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