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Proposal of Spring Assist Unit for Walking Disabilities

Authors:
Haruki Baba
Yoshitoshi Murata
Tomoki Yamato

Keywords: walking disability, walking assit unit, spring, walking posture, muscle power

Abstract:
People with diseases, such as hemiplegia and latter-stage elderly people often have a walking disability, which increases their risk of falling and injuring themselves. The magnitude of the angular velocity during the kicking the floor phase (raising the heel) and swinging the toe forward phase of walking is lower for disabled people than for healthy persons due to lower muscle power. We have developed a spring assist unit that fits in the heel of a shoe and helps disabled people raise their heel when beginning to walk. Experimental results demonstrated that it substantially assists gait walking, that there is a correlation between body weight and optimal spring stiffness, and that the spring assist unit does not affect the person’s walking posture.

Pages: 20 to 25

Copyright: Copyright (c) IARIA, 2020

Publication date: March 22, 2020

Published in: conference

ISSN: 2308-4359

ISBN: 978-1-61208-763-4

Location: Valencia, Spain

Dates: from November 21, 2020 to November 25, 2020