GaitEnable: An omnidirectional robotic system for gait rehabilitation

Abstract

This paper introduces GaitEnable, a robotic gait trainer composed of an actuated omnidirectional mobile base, a passive body weight support (BWS) system, and a reactive control system that can initiate, sustain, stabilize or perturb a user's gait. The device is designed to provide minimal constraints to the user's natural motion, and its actuated mobile base can move cooperatively with the user in any direction. Data from preliminary experiments performed by a healthy male subject confirm that the reactive control system can compensate for the device's inertial effects and that the device's omnidirectional mobile base reduces pelvis and torso motion constraints. The results also demonstrate that GaitEnable can easily be programmed to simulate different types of behaviours or motion constraints.