NDLI: Effects of a powered ankle-foot orthosis on perturbed standing balance

Content Provider	Springer Nature : BioMed Central
Author	Emmens, Amber R. van Asseldonk, Edwin H. F. van der Kooij, Herman
Abstract	Background Lower extremity exoskeletons are mainly used to provide stepping support, while balancing is left to the user. Designing balance controllers is one of the biggest challenges in the development of exoskeletons. The goal of this study was to design and evaluate a balance controller for a powered ankle-foot orthosis and assess its effect on the standing balance of healthy subjects. Methods We designed and implemented a balance controller based on the subject’s body sway. This controller was compared to a simple virtual-ankle stiffness and a zero impedance controller. Ten healthy subjects wearing a powered ankle-foot orthosis had to maintain standing balance without stepping while receiving anteroposterior pushes. Center of mass kinematics, ankle torques and muscle activity of the lower legs were analyzed to assess the balance performance of the user and exoskeleton. Results The different controllers did not significantly affect the center of mass responses. However, the body sway based controller resulted in a decrease of 29% in the biological ankle torque compared to the zero impedance controller and a decrease of 32% compared to the virtual-ankle stiffness. Furthermore, the soleus muscle activity of the left and right leg decreased on average with 8%, while the tibialis anterior muscle activity increased with 47% compared to zero impedance. Conclusion The body sway based controller generated human-like torque profiles, whereas the virtual-ankle stiffness did not. As a result, the powered ankle-foot orthosis with the body sway based controller was effective in assisting the healthy subjects in maintaining balance, although the improvements were not seen in the body sway response, but in the subjects’ decreased biological ankle torques to counteract the perturbations. This decrease was a combined effect of decreased soleus muscle activity and increased tibialis anterior muscle activity.
Related Links	https://jneuroengrehab.biomedcentral.com/counter/pdf/10.1186/s12984-018-0393-8.pdf
Ending Page	13
Page Count	13
Starting Page	1
File Format	HTM / HTML
ISSN	17430003
DOI	10.1186/s12984-018-0393-8
Journal	Journal of NeuroEngineering and Rehabilitation
Issue Number	1
Volume Number	15
Language	English
Publisher	BioMed Central
Publisher Date	2018-06-18
Access Restriction	Open
Subject Keyword	Neurosciences Neurology Rehabilitation Medicine Biomedical Engineering and Bioengineering Standing balance Ankle-foot orthosis Balance control Exoskeleton
Content Type	Text
Resource Type	Article
Subject	Health Informatics Rehabilitation
Journal Impact Factor	5.2/2023
5-Year Journal Impact Factor	5.6/2023

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1	Ministry of Education (GoI), Department of Higher Education	Sanctioning Authority	https://www.education.gov.in/ict-initiatives
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4	Project PI / Joint PI	Principal Investigator and Joint Principal Investigators of the project	Dr. B. Sutradhar bsutra@ndl.gov.in Prof. Saswat Chakrabarti will be added soon
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