TY - GEN
T1 - Relation between magnitude of applied torque during pre-swing phase and toe clearance change to prevent trip of elderly people
AU - Miyake, Tamon
AU - Kobayashi, Yo
AU - Fujie, Masakatsu G.
AU - Sugano, Shigeki
N1 - Funding Information:
This work was supported in a part by the Program for Leading Graduate Schools, Graduate Program for Embodiment Infonnatics of the Ministry of Education, Culture, Sports, Science and Technology (MEXT) of Japan, and JSPS KAKENHI Grant Number 25220005
Publisher Copyright:
© 2016 IEEE.
PY - 2017/2/6
Y1 - 2017/2/6
N2 - Elderly people are at risk of falling because of their low toe clearance. Gait training to improve toe clearance could be instrumental in avoiding tripping. We propose using a gait-training robot that applies torque during the pre-swing phase to achieve this goal. It is still possible to revert to their original trajectory after the training, however, depending on the magnitude of the applied torque. We investigated the relation between the magnitude of the applied torque and the change in toe clearance before and after application of torque. We developed a robot and carried out an experiment in which a motor pulls a string embedded on the robotic frame worn by the participants, thereby applying torque during the pre-swing phase. The experimental task included walking on a treadmill for 50 s. We applied torque to the knee during the pre-swing phase for 20 s. The phases before and after applying torque were 15-s normal walking phases with no interference from the robot. We compared toe clearance during the phases before and after applying torque. We found that the toe clearance increased after applying a torque of 8 Nm. We were thus able to verify the influence of torque on toe clearance.
AB - Elderly people are at risk of falling because of their low toe clearance. Gait training to improve toe clearance could be instrumental in avoiding tripping. We propose using a gait-training robot that applies torque during the pre-swing phase to achieve this goal. It is still possible to revert to their original trajectory after the training, however, depending on the magnitude of the applied torque. We investigated the relation between the magnitude of the applied torque and the change in toe clearance before and after application of torque. We developed a robot and carried out an experiment in which a motor pulls a string embedded on the robotic frame worn by the participants, thereby applying torque during the pre-swing phase. The experimental task included walking on a treadmill for 50 s. We applied torque to the knee during the pre-swing phase for 20 s. The phases before and after applying torque were 15-s normal walking phases with no interference from the robot. We compared toe clearance during the phases before and after applying torque. We found that the toe clearance increased after applying a torque of 8 Nm. We were thus able to verify the influence of torque on toe clearance.
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U2 - 10.1109/SMC.2016.7844606
DO - 10.1109/SMC.2016.7844606
M3 - Conference contribution
AN - SCOPUS:85015788090
T3 - 2016 IEEE International Conference on Systems, Man, and Cybernetics, SMC 2016 - Conference Proceedings
SP - 2448
EP - 2453
BT - 2016 IEEE International Conference on Systems, Man, and Cybernetics, SMC 2016 - Conference Proceedings
PB - Institute of Electrical and Electronics Engineers Inc.
T2 - 2016 IEEE International Conference on Systems, Man, and Cybernetics, SMC 2016
Y2 - 9 October 2016 through 12 October 2016
ER -