TY - GEN
T1 - Design of small-size pouch motors for rat gait rehabilitation device
AU - Chang, Shih Yin
AU - Takashima, Kenta
AU - Nishikawa, Satoshi
AU - Niiyama, Ryuma
AU - Someya, Takao
AU - Onodera, Hiroshi
AU - Kuniyoshi, Yasuo
N1 - Publisher Copyright:
© 2015 IEEE.
PY - 2015/11/4
Y1 - 2015/11/4
N2 - Recent studies have demonstrated that active gait training can recover voluntary locomotive ability of paralyzed rats. Rehabilitation devices used for studying spinal cord injury to date are usually fixed on a treadmill, but they have been used only slightly for active training. To process active rehabilitation, a wearable, lightweight device with adequate output is needed. Pouch motors, soft pneumatic actuators, are extremely light and have other benefits such as low cost, easy fabrication, and highly customizable design. They can be used to develop active gait rehabilitation devices. However, performance details of different motor designs have not been examined. As described herein, to build a wearable gait assistive device for rat study, we specifically examine how to design small pouch motors with a good contraction ratio and force output. Results show that pouch performance decreases dramatically with size, but better output is obtainable by separation into small 0.8 length-to-width ratio rooms. We used this knowledge to produce an assistive robot suit for gait rehabilitation and to test it with paralyzed rats. Results show that these small pouches can produce sufficient power to control hip joint movements during gait training. They can reveal the potential for new pouch motor applications for spinal cord injury studies.
AB - Recent studies have demonstrated that active gait training can recover voluntary locomotive ability of paralyzed rats. Rehabilitation devices used for studying spinal cord injury to date are usually fixed on a treadmill, but they have been used only slightly for active training. To process active rehabilitation, a wearable, lightweight device with adequate output is needed. Pouch motors, soft pneumatic actuators, are extremely light and have other benefits such as low cost, easy fabrication, and highly customizable design. They can be used to develop active gait rehabilitation devices. However, performance details of different motor designs have not been examined. As described herein, to build a wearable gait assistive device for rat study, we specifically examine how to design small pouch motors with a good contraction ratio and force output. Results show that pouch performance decreases dramatically with size, but better output is obtainable by separation into small 0.8 length-to-width ratio rooms. We used this knowledge to produce an assistive robot suit for gait rehabilitation and to test it with paralyzed rats. Results show that these small pouches can produce sufficient power to control hip joint movements during gait training. They can reveal the potential for new pouch motor applications for spinal cord injury studies.
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U2 - 10.1109/EMBC.2015.7319413
DO - 10.1109/EMBC.2015.7319413
M3 - Conference contribution
C2 - 26737313
AN - SCOPUS:84953269787
T3 - Proceedings of the Annual International Conference of the IEEE Engineering in Medicine and Biology Society, EMBS
SP - 4578
EP - 4581
BT - 2015 37th Annual International Conference of the IEEE Engineering in Medicine and Biology Society, EMBC 2015
PB - Institute of Electrical and Electronics Engineers Inc.
T2 - 37th Annual International Conference of the IEEE Engineering in Medicine and Biology Society, EMBC 2015
Y2 - 25 August 2015 through 29 August 2015
ER -