• Journal of rehabilitation welfare engineering & assistive technology
• /
• v.10 no.4
• /
• pp.305-313
• /
• 2016

Movements of the lower limb are important for normal walking and smooth oscillation of the center of gravity. The ankle rotations such as dorsi-flexion, plantar-flexion, inversion and eversion allows the foot to accommodate to ground during level ground walking. Current below knee (B/K) prostheses are used for replacing amputated ankle, and make it possible for amputees to walk again. However, most of amputees with B/K prostheses often experience a loss of terrain adaptability as well as stability because of limited ankle rotation. This study is focused on the development of multi-rotational prosthetic foot for lower limb amputee. Our prosthesis is possible for amputees to easily walk in level ground by rotating ankle joint in sagittal plane and adapt to the abnormal terrain with ankle rotation in coronal plane. The resistance of ankle joint in the direction of dorsi/plantar-flexion can be manually regulated by hydraulic damper with controllable nozzle. Furthermore, double layered rubber induce the prosthesis adapt to irregular ground by tilting itself in direction of eversion and inversion. The experimental results highlights the potential that our prosthesis induce a normal gait for below knee amputee.

• Journal of the HCI Society of Korea
• /
• v.14 no.2
• /
• pp.41-47
• /
• 2019

In this study, a smart assistive device is designed to recognize pedestrian signal and to provide audio instructions for visually impaired people in crossing streets safely. Walking alone is one of the biggest challenges to the visually impaired and it deteriorates their life quality. The proposed device has a camera attached on a pair of glasses which can detect traffic lights, recognize pedestrian signals in real-time using a machine learning algorithm on GPU board and provide audio instructions to the user. For the portability, the dimension of the device is designed to be compact and light but with sufficient battery life. The embedded processor of device is wired to the small camera which is attached on a pair of glasses. Also, on inner part of the leg of the glasses, a bone-conduction speaker is installed which can give audio instructions without blocking external sounds for safety reason. The performance of the proposed device was validated with experiments and it showed 87.0% recall and 100% precision for detecting pedestrian green light, and 94.4% recall and 97.1% precision for detecting pedestrian red light.

• Journal of the Korea Academia-Industrial cooperation Society
• /
• v.11 no.10
• /
• pp.3658-3665
• /
• 2010

As the population of elderly people and disabled people are increased, various demands for human welfare using robot system are raised. Especially autonomous rehabilitation system using robot could reduce the human effort while maintaining the its intrinsic efficacy. This study deals with mobile gait rehabilitation system which combined with BWS (Body Weight Support) for training of elderly and handicapped people who suffer the muscle force weakness of lower extremity. BWS which is designed by kinematic analysis of body lifting characteristics and walking guide system are integrated with main control system and wheeled platform. This mobile platform is operated by UCS (User Command System) and autonomous trajectory planning algorithm. Finally, through the EMG (Electromyography) signal measuring and its analysis for subject, performance and feasibility of developed system is verified.

• Journal of Institute of Control, Robotics and Systems
• /
• v.16 no.10
• /
• pp.939-947
• /
• 2010

With the rising numbers of elderly and disabled people, the demand for welfare services using a robotic system and not involving human effort is likewise increasing. This study deals with a mobile-robot system combined with a BWS (Body Weight Support) system for gait rehabilitation. The BWS system is designed via the kinematic analysis of the robot's body-lifting characteristics and of the walking guide system that controls the total rehabilitation system integrated in the mobile robot. This mobile platform is operated by utilizing the AGV (Autonomous Guided Vehicle) driving algorithm. Especially, the method that integrates geometric path tracking and obstacle avoidance for a nonholonomic mobile robot is applied so that the system can be operated in an area where the elderly users are expected to be situated, such as in a public hospital or a rehabilitation center. The mobile robot follows the path by moving through the turning radius supplied by the pure-pursuit method which is one of the existing geometric path-tracking methods. The effectiveness of the proposed method is verified through the real experiments those are conducted for path tracking with static- and dynamic-obstacle avoidance. Finally, through the EMG (Electromyography) signal measurement of the subject, the performance of the proposed system in a real operation condition is evaluated.

• Physical Therapy Korea
• /
• v.21 no.1
• /
• pp.29-36
• /
• 2014

The purpose of this study was to investigate the immediate effect of fabric ankle-foot orthosis on spatiotemporal gait parameters, compared to a barefoot condition in children with spastic cerebral palsy. Eleven children with spastic cerebral palsy participated in this study. Spatiotemporal gait parameters were measured with the GAITRite system. Fabric ankle-foot orthosis significantly improved Timed Up and Go test time and gait velocity. There was no significant difference in cadence. The step time significantly improved in both the more and less affected foot compared to the barefoot condition. The step length of the affected foot also significantly improved, but there was no significant difference in the step length of the less affected foot. There was significant improvement in the stride length of both the affected and less affected foot, but no significant difference in single stance or double stance. The fabric ankle-foot orthosis could improve stability, and selective control of the joint and promote better walking in children with cerebral palsy. Consequently, the fabric ankle-foot orthosis might be an alternative assistive device for neurological populations as a primary role instead of the typical ankle-foot orthosis.

• The Journal of Korea Robotics Society
• /
• v.12 no.2
• /
• pp.124-131
• /
• 2017

This paper present a novel approach to control the lower body power assistive exoskeleton system of a HEXAR-CR35 aimed at improving a muscular strength. More specifically the control of based on the human intention is crucial of importance to ensure intuitive and dexterous motion with the human. In this contribution, we proposed the detection algorithm of the human intention using the MCRS which are developed to measure the contraction of the muscle with variation of the circumference. The proposed algorithm provides a joint motion of exoskeleton corresponding the relate muscles. The main advantages of the algorithm are its simplicity, computational efficiency to control one joint of the HEXAR-CR35 which are consisted knee-active type exoskeleton (the other joints are consisted with the passive or quasi-passive joints that can be arranged by analyzing of the human joint functions). As a consequence, the motion of exoskeleton is generated according to the gait phase: swing and stance phase which are determined by the foot insole sensors. The experimental evaluation of the proposed algorithm is achieved in walking with the exoskeleton while carrying the external mass in the back side.

• Proceedings of the KSME Conference
• /
• 2004.04a
• /
• pp.330-335
• /
• 2004

The needs of walking assistive device such as the Ankle Foot Orthosis (A.F.O.) are getting greater than before. However, most of the A.F.O. are generally imported rather than domestic manufacturing. The major reason of high import reliability is the rack of impact properties of domestic commercial products. Therefore, this research is going to focus on the evaluation of impact properties of the A.F.O. which has the high import reliability. Unfortunately, these kinds of researches are not performed sufficiently. This research is going to evaluate impact energy behavior in composite materials such as the glass/epoxy (S-glass, $[0/90]_{2S}$) and the aramid/epoxy (Kevlar-29, woven type, 8 ply) of ankle foot orthosis. The approach methods were as follows. 1) The history of impact load and impact energy due to the various velocities. 2) Relationship between the deflection and damage shape according to the impact velocities. 3) The behavior of absorbed energy and residual strength rate due to the various impact velocities.

• The Journal of Korea Robotics Society
• /
• v.18 no.4
• /
• pp.496-504
• /
• 2023

This paper recognizes the motion intention of the wearer using a muscle stiffness sensor and proposes a control system for a wearable robot based on this. The proposed system recognizes the onset time of the motion using sensor data, determines the assistance mode, and provides assistive torque to the hip flexion/extension motion of the wearer through the generated reference trajectory according to the determined mode. The onset time of motion was detected using the CUSUM algorithm from the muscle stiffness sensor, and by comparing the detection results of the onset time with the EMG sensor and IMU, it verified its applicability as an input device for recognizing the intention of the wearer before motion. In addition, the stability of the proposed method was confirmed by comparing the results detected according to the walking speed of two subjects (1 male and 1 female). Based on these results, the assistance mode (gait assistance mode and muscle strengthening mode) was determined based on the detection results of onset time, and a reference trajectory was generated through cubic spline interpolation according to the determined assistance mode. And, the practicality of the proposed system was also confirmed by applying it to an actual wearable robot.

• Journal of Korea Entertainment Industry Association
• /
• v.14 no.7
• /
• pp.519-528
• /
• 2020

Purpose of this study is to analyze the changes in state anxiety, heart rate, and fall efficacy of the elderly through the handle height of walking assistant vehicle (WAV). The subjects were 32 elderlies. WAV was in the form of strollers, and it's handle height was set as 48% of a subject's total height. Also, it's height was divided into 48, 43, 38%. To measure the state anxiety, Korean State-Trait Anxiety Inventory was used and to measure the heart rate, Fitbit Charge 2 wrist heart rate monitor was used. To measure the fall efficacy, Fall Efficacy Scale-Korea was used. As the results of state anxiety and heart rate, the statistically significant increase showed continuously through the decrease of the handle height of WAV. As the results of fall efficacy, the statistically significant decrease showed continuously through the decrease of the handle height of WAV. In all of the post hoc test, the results of the state anxiety and fall efficacy showed significant difference among the each handle height of WAV and the results of the heart rate showed significant difference between the 48, 43% and 38% handle height of WAV. Thus, to decrease the state anxiety and heart rate and increase the fall efficacy of the elderly, the handle height of WAV should be properly positioned and considered to adjust to 48% of the user's total height.

• Journal of rehabilitation welfare engineering & assistive technology
• /
• v.10 no.3
• /
• pp.207-214
• /
• 2016

The aim of this study was to evaluate Influence on intra-limb coordination in individuals wearing knee brace during walking. Seven healthy male adults ($32.3{\pm}2.7$ years old, $175.2{\pm}3.8cm$, $76.2{\pm}8.7kg$) participated. They wore knee brace or didn't wear any knee brace and were asked to walk along a 10 m long walkway. Spatiotemporal parameters, angles of the lower limbs, and intra-limb continuous relative phase (CRP) were measured and calculated. No differences of spatiotemporal parameters were shown (all p > 0.05). There were no changes in the angle and its range of motion (ROM) in the hip for the subjects as wearing knee brace, while ROM ($65.5{\pm}3.7^{\circ}$ vs. $60.5{\pm}3.5^{\circ}$, p < 0.05) of the angle and maximum flexion angles (stance: $31.9{\pm}4.6$ vs. $25.6{\pm}5.5$, swing: $76.7{\pm}3.1$ vs. $68.9{\pm}3.4$, all p < 0.05) in the knee significantly decreased. No changes in ROM of angle in the ankle were shown, whereas maximum dorsiflexion decreased ($22.4{\pm}2.6$ vs. $19.2{\pm}2.1$, p < 0.05) and maximum plantarflexion increased ($9.5{\pm}3.0$ vs. $15.7{\pm}2.2$, p<0.05). There were no changes in most of CRP between joints. CRP between the hip and knee joints decreased ($93.0{\pm}7.8$ vs, $84.7{\pm}4.9$, p < 0.05). Most of CRP standard deviation increased (between the hip and ankle joint during swing: $25.1{\pm}6.7$ vs. $32.4{\pm}1.9$, between the knee and ankle joint during stance: $46.0{\pm}12.9$ vs. $80.1{\pm}31.1$, between the knee and ankle joint during swing: $34.5{\pm}4.1$ vs. $37.6{\pm}3.1$, all p < 0.05). These results indicated that wearing knee brace affected joint angle and intra-limb coordination, but less affected gait features.