Motility Evaluation of a Novel Overground Functional Mobility Tool for Post Stroke Rehabilitation

Abstract

The KineAssist is a robotic device that allows the therapist to safely interact with and challenge a patient as they train in whole body dynamic-balance tasks such as sit to stand or gait. The design and development of the KineAssist proceeded rapidly as a startup product of a small company. Here we briefly restate the KineAssist's motivation, design, and use, and then present an initial evaluation of the alpha-prototype's performance on healthy and stroke survivors. The studies showed that sacral marker trajectories were slower but otherwise not significantly changed in amplitude when using the device. The KineAssist therefore yields a safe environment for training functional mobility tasks, and these results identify a promising method of safely challenging patients to exert more effort while maintaining natural kinematic ranges of motion.