How Robotics is Helping Stroke Survivors Learn To Walk Again

          Stroke survivors can often spend months, or maybe years, trying to regain their mobility. Physical therapists are now using robotics powered by AI to assist patients learn to maneuver their hands, arms, and legs again.

Hospitals and physical therapy centers currently use robotic harnesses attached to a treadmill to help lower costs. Even though such harnesses are set up to the individual at the start of a session, they don’t adjust to the patient in real-time and can actually hinder their progress.

          One manufacturer has found an answer to the restrictions of conventional harnesses by designing a robotic harness that doesn’t only support an individual's weight but can also detect and proper a person’s gait by pushing them forward, back, or side to side. The harness first collects information on leg movement, stride, and muscle activity with advanced body sensors. AI analyzes the info and offers customer support to encourage a more natural gait.

The new harness can help stroke survivors rebuild lost muscle mass and proper posture and movement, but it finishes up doing even quite that. It actually retrains the brain on the way to balance between gravity and progress. And it gets fast results. in only a one-hour training session, patients showed an improvement in their gait over those that received no treatment.

One of the most recent robotic arm braces can sense electromyography (EMG) signals through non-invasive sensors. The device can then restore function to their otherwise paralyzed arms by detecting weak muscle signals and activating a motor to maneuver the hand and arm as desired. Patients can use their brains to maneuver their hands as they want, resulting in faster recoveries.

          For patients who have suffered muscle loss thanks to immobility, exoskeletons are now getting used for rehabilitation. Like their industrial counterparts, these devices are fitted to a person’s body and boost their performance. this will help stroke survivors regain coordination as they get stronger.

Rehabilitation robots help patients to regularly perform their exercises reception. Sometimes to its own detriment, the human hand is adaptable. Without proper training, patients often find themselves with unnatural workarounds in their movements. Orthotic robotic arms correct this and also limit a patient’s degrees of motion to focus on specific muscles for strength training.

Find out more about how exoskeleton robots are getting used in healthcare, industrial, and military applications.

     

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