Unlockable Knee Joint Mechanism for Powered Gait Orthosis
By Kim, Gyoosuk; Kang, Shinill; Kang, Sungjae; Ryu, Jeicheong; Mun, Museoung; Kim, Kyunghoon; International Journal of Precision Engineering and Manufacturing, Vol. 10, No. 3, pp. 83-89Publication Date: July 2009
Study undertaken to develop a powered gait orthosis (PGO) with a moveable knee joint to improve the gait speed of patients with spinal cord injury (SCI). The unlockable knee joint PGO (UKJ-PGO) system uses a gas spring cylinder and a solenoid locking device to enable flexion of the joint, while the rigidity of the system’s hip-joint device is enhanced using air muscles. A gait analysis was conducted with two male participants with complete paraplegia, aged 37 and 41 years, to evaluate the performance of the UKJ-PGO, and the kinematic parameters obtained were compared with those of a standard PGO. In the gait of participants using the UKJ-PGO, the new knee-joint device enabled flexion during the swing phase and showed a decrease in pelvic tilt compared with the standard GPO gait. As greater flexion was possible at the knee joint, the duration of the stance phase substantially decreased to near-normal value and the duration of the swing phase increased accordingly. In addition, participants' gait using the UKJ-PGO was faster than that with the standard GPO.
Published by: Springer Publishing Company (Website:http://www.springerpub.com)
Link to text: http://www.springerlink.com/content/g68772tg61761151/fulltext.pdf
