Robotic Device Improves Balance and Gait in Parkinson's Disease Patients
From: Medical Design Technology - 12/20/2017

Sunil Agrawal, professor of mechanical engineering and of rehabilitation and
regenerative medicine at Columbia Engineering, along with Dario Martelli, a
post-doctoral researcher in his group, have been working on falls with people
with Parkinson's Disease with Movement Disorders faculty from the department
of neurology at Columbia University Medical Center, Stanley Fahn, a leading
expert in Parkinson's, and Un Jung Kang, division director, and Movement
Disorder Fellow Lan Luo. In their latest study, published today in Scientific
Reports, the team looked at whether or not Parkinson's disease affects
patients' balance and diminishes their ability to react and adapt to walking
with perturbations. The researchers found that the ability to adapt to
multiple perturbations or to modify responses to changing amplitudes or
directions was not affected by PD; both the Parkinson's and the healthy
subjects controlled their reactive strategies in the same way. In fact, both
groups improved their unperturbed walking after a single training session
with repeated waist pull perturbations.

Agrawal's team, experts in rehabilitation robotics, used a robotic system -
Tethered Pelvic Assist Device (TPAD) - invented in his Robotics and
Rehabilitation (RoAR) Laboratory to perform the study. The TPAD is a
wearable, lightweight cable-driven robot that can be programmed to provide
forces on the pelvis in a desired direction as a subject walks on a
treadmill. In an earlier study, Agrawal successfully used the TPAD to improve
posture and walking in children with cerebral palsy.

Read the entire article at:
https://www.mdtmag.com/news/2017/12/robotic-device-improves-balance-and-gait-parkinsons-disease-patients

Links:
Adaptation of Stability during Perturbed Walking in Parkinson's Disease
https://www.nature.com/articles/s41598-017-18075-6

Tethered Pelvic Assist Device
https://roar.me.columbia.edu/content/tpad

RoAR Lab
https://roar.me.columbia.edu

Sunil Agrawal
http://me.columbia.edu/sunil-agrawal

PD May Not Affect the Ability to Walk with Perturbations, Researchers Say
http://www.rehabpub.com/2017/12/pd-may-not-affect-ability-walk-perturbations-according-researchers

Related:
Robot-driven Device Improves Crouch Gait in Children with Cerebral Palsy
http://engineering.columbia.edu/news/sunil-agrawal-cerebral-palsy-crouch-gait