Design of small-size pouch motors for rat gait rehabilitation device

Shih Yin Chang, Kenta Takashima, Satoshi Nishikawa, Ryuma Niiyama, Takao Someya, Hiroshi Onodera, Yasuo Kuniyoshi

Research output: Chapter in Book/Report/Conference proceedingConference contribution

19 Citations (Scopus)

Abstract

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.

Original languageEnglish
Title of host publication2015 37th Annual International Conference of the IEEE Engineering in Medicine and Biology Society, EMBC 2015
PublisherInstitute of Electrical and Electronics Engineers Inc.
Pages4578-4581
Number of pages4
ISBN (Electronic)9781424492718
DOIs
Publication statusPublished - Nov 4 2015
Externally publishedYes
Event37th Annual International Conference of the IEEE Engineering in Medicine and Biology Society, EMBC 2015 - Milan, Italy
Duration: Aug 25 2015Aug 29 2015

Publication series

NameProceedings of the Annual International Conference of the IEEE Engineering in Medicine and Biology Society, EMBS
Volume2015-November
ISSN (Print)1557-170X

Other

Other37th Annual International Conference of the IEEE Engineering in Medicine and Biology Society, EMBC 2015
Country/TerritoryItaly
CityMilan
Period8/25/158/29/15

All Science Journal Classification (ASJC) codes

  • Signal Processing
  • Biomedical Engineering
  • Computer Vision and Pattern Recognition
  • Health Informatics

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