Motion-Based Control Strategy of Knee Actuated Exoskeletal Gait Orthosis for Hemiplegic Patients: A Feasibility Study

In this study, we developed a unilateral knee actuated exoskeletal gait orthosis (KAEGO) for hemiplegic patients to conduct gait training in real-world environments without spatial limitations. For this purpose, it is crucial that the controller interacts with the patient’s gait intentions. This study newly proposes a simple gait control strategy that detects the gait state and recognizes the patient’s gait intentions using only the motion information of the lower limbs obtained from an embedded inertial measurement units (IMU) sensor and a knee angle sensor without employing ground reaction force (GRF) sensors. In addition, a torque generation method based on negative damping was newly applied as a method to determine the appropriate amount of assistive torque to support flexion or extension movements of the knee joint. To validate the performance of the developed KAEGO and the effectiveness of our proposed gait control strategy, we conducted walking tests with a hemiplegic patient. These tests included verifying the accuracy of gait recognition and comparing the metabolic cost of transport (COT). The experimental results confirmed that our gait control approach effectively recognizes the patient’s gait intentions without GRF sensors and reduces the metabolic cost by approximately 8% compared to not wearing the device.