Can Robotic Hip Exoskeletons Help Stroke Patients Get Back on Track?
Giving patients the power to reclaim their mobility, wearable exoskeletons are changing the way we think about movement.
More than 80% of stroke survivors experience walking difficulty, significantly impacting their daily lives, independence, and overall quality of life. Meghan Huber, assistant professor of mechanical and industrial engineering, and her UMass Amherst colleagues have pushed forward the bounds of stroke recovery with a unique robotic hip exoskeleton, designed as a training tool to improve walking function.
Their study, published in IEEE Transactions on Neural Systems and Rehabilitation Engineering, reveals that their robotic hip exoskeleton has the potential to effectively train individuals to modify their walking asymmetry—a condition that stroke survivors often experience in which one step is shorter than the other.
The approach employed by the robotic exoskeleton is inspired by split-belt treadmills, which are specialized machines with two side-by-side belts moving at different speeds. Prior research has shown that repeated training on a split-belt treadmill can reduce walking asymmetry in stroke patients.
Unfortunately, there are limits to the benefits gained from treadmill-based training methods. “The ultimate goal of gait rehabilitation is not to improve walking on a treadmill—it is to improve locomotor function overground,” says Huber. “With this in mind, our focus is to develop methods of gait rehabilitation that translate to functional improvements in real-world contexts.”
Now that the research team has proven that the exoskeleton can alter gait asymmetry, they are eager to move their research into overground contexts that are more akin to the real world. Because the device they have created is portable, it can be applied in a wide array of walking contexts. The researchers also plan to expand their work by measuring the neural changes caused by walking with the exoskeleton and testing this new method on stroke survivors.
The robotic hip exoskeleton is just one of the innovative devices designed to study and enhance gait function developed by the collaborative team of undergraduate students, graduate students, and postdoctoral researchers from the Human Robot Systems Laboratory, which is led by Huber, and the Integrative Locomotion Lab, which is led by Wouter Hoogkamer, assistant professor of kinesiology.
“It is inspiring to witness the innovations that emerge when individuals from diverse backgrounds unite under a shared mission,” says Huber. “Only through this type of cross-disciplinary research can we engineer technologies that can have a meaningful impact on people’s lives.”