Mobile Exoskeleton for Spinal Cord Injury: Development and Testing

Abstract

For those who have lost the ability to walk due to paralysis or other injuries, eLEGS, a mobile robotic exoskeleton, offers the chance to walk again. The device is a mobile exoskeleton with actuated sagittal plane hip and knee joints which supports the user and moves their legs through a natural gait. The device uses a multi-leveled controller that consists of a state machine to determine the user’s intended motion, a trajectory generator to establish desired joint behavior, and a low level controller to calculate individual joint controller output. The system can be controlled by a physical therapist or can be controlled by the user. Subject testing results are presented from a seven subject pilot study including patients with complete and incomplete injuries. The testing resulted in six of the seven subjects walking unassisted using forearm crutches after a single two hour testing session.