Abstract
Walking is an important activity that supports the health-related quality of life, and for those who need assistance, robotic devices are available to help. Recent progress in wearable robots has identified the importance of customizing the assistance provided by the robot to the individual, resulting in robot adaptation to the human. However, current implementations minimize the role of human adaptation to the robot, for example, by the users modifying their movements based on the provided robot assistance. This study investigated the effect of visual feedback to guide the users in adapting their movements in response to wearable robot assistance. The visual feedback helped the users reduce their metabolic cost of walking without any changes in robot assistance in a given time. In a case with the initially metabolic expensive (IMExp) exoskeleton condition, both training methods helped reduce the metabolic cost of walking. The results suggest that visual feedback training is helpful to use the exoskeleton for various conditions. Without feedback, the training is helpful only for the IMExp exoskeleton condition. This result suggests visual feedback training can be useful to facilitate the use of non-personalized, generic assistance, where the assistance is not tuned for each user, in a relatively short time.
Highlights
Walking is an important activity that supports the health-related quality of life, and for those who need assistance, robotic devices are available to help
This study investigated the effects of visual guidance training on robotic ankle exoskeleton use
We hypothesized that when assistance from a robot is helpful even with minimal human adaptation, the addition of visual feedback helps to maintain the benefits of wearable robot use
Summary
Walking is an important activity that supports the health-related quality of life, and for those who need assistance, robotic devices are available to help. It was noted that after three days of training on exoskeleton use, the metabolic cost of walking could change from a 7% increase over baseline to a 10% decrease[21] These results suggest that metabolically inefficient assistance from a wearable robot may be the result of insufficient user adaptation to the robot. Surface EMG electrode in motor exploration, users appeared to improve their confidence while using a robotic device, an important factor in rehabilitation[25], and to enhance their ability to appropriately use a lower-limb wearable robot[25,26] These previous studies, focused on the effect of wearable robot assistance on the user’s gait, not on a training protocol; the true effect of the instruction set for motor exploration remains unclear. It is possible that visual feedback with instruction may facilitate wearable robot use and reduce walking effort after visual guidance training
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