Abstract
Falls are acknowledged as one of the most serious causes of health problems in the elderly population. Thus, there is an urgent need to develop novel technological solutions to counteract the balance loss and prevent falls. In this pilot study, two healthy older volunteers were enrolled to investigate the effectiveness of different assistive torque patterns provided by a pelvis exoskeleton in promoting balance recovery after slippages. Our results revealed that the best strategy to counteract the balance loss after a slippage consists in slowing the slipping foot and minimizing the downward movement of the center of mass by providing opposite torque patterns between unperturbed and perturbed hips (i.e., flex/extensor assistive torques, respectively).
This work was supported by the European Union within the CYBERLEGs and the CYBERLEGs Plus Plus projects.
F. Aprigliano and V. Monaco—Equally contributed and alphabetic order.
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Aprigliano, F., Monaco, V., Tropea, P., Martelli, D., Vitiello, N., Micera, S. (2019). Effectiveness of Assistive Torque Patterns Supplied by a Pelvis Exoskeleton After Slippages: A Pilot Study. In: Masia, L., Micera, S., Akay, M., Pons, J. (eds) Converging Clinical and Engineering Research on Neurorehabilitation III. ICNR 2018. Biosystems & Biorobotics, vol 21. Springer, Cham. https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-030-01845-0_55
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DOI: https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-030-01845-0_55
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