Rehabilitation of Functional Posture and Walking: Coordination of healthy and Impaired Limbs

Abstract

Abstract —This paper presents our research approach related to rehabilitation of functions of lower extremities. Specifically, we address the coherence between biologically controlled healthy and artificially controlled impaired or missing limbs. The system we aim at controlling is either Functional Electrical Stimulation (FES) or leg prostheses. The novelty of our approach is a new representation of normal movement in the sensory space in order to: 1) identify postural task transition as soon as possible after the patient made the decision, in order to allow for optimal posture preparation and execution, and 2) compare the execution of the ongoing task with the reference pattern in the sensory space in order to identify the current movement phase. This novelty in control will improve the global functioning of the rehabilitation systems; yet, even more important enhance the therapeutic effects because the patient will have active role in controlling the posture and locomotion. We describe here the principle of our approach and illustrate it with preliminary results from sit-to-stand experiments.