Walking-Assisted Gait in Rehabilitation

Walkers are extensively used by individuals to improve stability and ambulatory ability. Despite common usage and prolonged existence, the basic walker design still remained unchanged. The objective of this study is to develop an instrumented walker and evaluate the force transferred through the subject hand's resultant pressures. The corresponding forces are used for the analyses of upper extremity kinetics and kinematics. Human motion tracking system is used for the kinematic analysis, which is used to modify a walker that is capable of reducing the stress experienced by the subject without changing the usage pattern of the walker. The upper extremity kinematics and kinetics data were acquired through QTM motion capturing system incorporate with Visual3D motion analysis system. The internal force and joint moment for the wrist, elbow and shoulder were determined using inverse dynamics method.