The patient is able to walk with a longer stride thanks to the robotic garment, which is placed around the thighs and hips and gently presses on the hips when the leg swings, helping the patient achieve a longer stride.
The wearer was able to walk faster and farther than he could have without the aid of the garment because the technology completely eliminated his frostbite while indoors.
Conor Walsh, Professor Paul A. Maeder of Engineering and Applied Sciences at SEAS and co-corresponding author of the study said that the small amount of mechanical assistance from the wearable robot was found to produce an intermediate effect and consistently helped improve walking over a range. of conditions for the individual.
The research showed the potential of soft robotics used to treat the dangerous symptoms of Parkinson’s disease, giving people the ability to regain both their mobility and independence.
The research is published in Nature Medicine.
Walsh Biodesign Laboratory at SEAS has been developing technologies to improve life.
The Wyss Institute for Biologically Inspired Engineering supported some of those technologies, including an exosuit for gait retraining after stroke, and Harvard’s Office of Technology Development entered into a licensing agreement with ReWalk Robotics to commercialize the technology.
SEAS and Sargent College received a grant from the Massachusetts Technology Collaborative to support the development and translation of next-generation robotics and wearable technologies in 2022. Move The laboratory’s goal is to support and enhance advances in human performance by providing the R&D infrastructure, funding, collaborative space and expertise needed to transform promising research into mature technologies that can be translated through industry partnerships, which They serve as a focal point for research. .
The team spent three months working with a 73-year-old man with Parkinson’s disease who suffered significant and disabling freezing episodes more than ten times a day. Despite using surgical and pharmaceutical treatments, he still suffered frequent falls, which left him dependent on a scooter to get around and prevented him from walking around his community.
In previous research, Walsh and his team used human optimization to demonstrate that a soft, wearable device can be used to increase hip flexion and help swing the leg forward to provide an efficient approach to reducing energy expenditure. during walking in healthy individuals.
The researchers approached freezing using the same approach. It is worn around the waist and thighs and operates using actuators and sensors. Using motion data collected by the sensor, algorithms determine gait phase and produce assist forces in sync with muscle contraction.
The result was immediate. The patient was able to walk without freezing indoors and with sporadic episodes outdoors without the need for any additional training. Without the device, he could also walk and talk without freezing, which was unusual.
The team was very excited to see how the technology affected the subjects’ gait,” said Jinsoo Kim, co-lead author of the study and former doctoral candidate at SEAS.
Ellis went on to say, “We don’t really know why this approach works so well because we don’t really understand freezing.” This study, however, points out the potential benefits of addressing freezing of gait from a “bottom-up” rather than a “top-down” perspective. Recovery of near-normal biomechanics alters peripheral gait dynamics and may influence central gait control processing.
Andrew Chin, Teresa Baker, Nicholas Wendel, Hee Doo Yang, Jinsoo Kim and Franchino Porciuncula were co-authors of the study. Ada Huang, Asa Eckert-Erdheim, and Dorothy Orzel also contributed to the design of the technology, and Sarah Sullivan supervised the clinical research.
It was supported by the Massachusetts Technology Collaborative Research and Development Grant, NIH U01 TR002775 from the National Institutes of Health, and CMMI-1925085 from the National Science Foundation.
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