Development of a Detachable Body Weight Support Robotic Rollator with Wearable Sensors to Assist Overground Gait Rehabilitation

Locomotion-focused neural rehabilitation therapies intensively practice gait motion on treadmills or overground for patients with neurological injuries. Traditionally, skilled therapists or robotic devices are required to assist with both the patient’s body weight support and pelvis movement, making the rehabilitation process both physically demanding and economically burdensome. In this abstract, we briefly summarized our developed detachable body weight support (BWS) rollator equipped with wearable sensors to facilitate overground gait training, aiming to enhance the user experience with minimal motion compensation. The developed BWS rollator system integrates wearable sensors, including instrumented shoes and harnesses, to capture the user’s gait performance in real-time. Various control strategies were developed to assist individuals with different levels of mobility difficulties. The system’s usability was validated through physical experiments with able-bodied subjects. The developed detachable BWS systems and control strategies are expected to be utilized in neural rehabilitation. Future research should focus on long-term clinical trials involving subjects with neurological disabilities.