title: WARD: a pneumatic system for body weight relief in gait rehabilitation.
abstract: The paper presents Walking Assistance and Rehabilitation Device (WARD), a system for walking rehabilitation devised to relieve the patient of his/her body weight of a constant and prescribed amount by externally supporting the subject at the upper trunk and pelvis level by means of a harness. The system is based on a pneumatic actuator that has proved to be effective at maintaining a constant relief force. The constancy of this force that should be maintained even under high body weight support (BWS) conditions (70-80% of body weight) seems to be important for a correct motor pattern. A law has been identified that may be useful to adjust walking speed as a function of the prescribed BWS. WARD is simple to construct, practical to use, and has been characterized on healthy subjects.
authors.affiliation: Laboratorio di Ingegneria Biomedica, Istituto Superiore di Sanità, Rome, Italy.
authors.forename: F
authors.initials: F
authors.lastname: Gazzani
authors.forename: A
authors.initials: A
authors.lastname: Fadda
authors.forename: M
authors.initials: M
authors.lastname: Torre
authors.forename: V
authors.initials: V
authors.lastname: Macellari
mesh_terms: D000328:Adult; D001696:Biomechanical Phenomena; D001835:Body Weight; D006233:Persons with Disabilities / Q000534:rehabilitation*; D005260:Female; D005684:Gait; D006801:Humans; D008297:Male; D008875:Middle Aged; D012046:Rehabilitation / Q000295:instrumentation*