Development and Preliminary Evaluation of a Lower Body Exosuit to Support Ankle Dorsiflexion

Abstract

For patients suffering from drop foot due to weakness of ankle dorsiflexion muscles, an ankle foot orthosis provides increased foot clearance during the swing phase of gait, but often restricts other gait functions, such as plantarflexion. Due to steady progress in the development of lighter and smaller actuator technologies, active wearable devices such as exosuits become relevant for rehabilitation, since they can offer an extended functionality including a more comfortable wear than passive plastic orthosis. The aim of the paper is to present a lightweight exosuit supporting dorsiflexion during gait with autonomous recognition of gait phases and conditions. One main requirement during the iterative development of the exosuit is a non-restrictive function, thus no differences between the assisted and non-assisted gait of a healthy subject should occur. We therefore conducted a pilot biomechanics study using statistical parametric mapping to analyze kinematics of the ankle joint and muscle activity of m. tibialis anterior of nine subjects without any gait anomalies walking with and without the exosuit. The results show no significant difference between with and without support. In contrast to passive orthosis, the developed system could be an enhanced solution to assist patients suffering from drop foot, which should be analyzed in the next step for evaluating the development.