Persons with stroke suffer limited walking distances due to sensory and motor changes following injury. Robotic exoskeletons have become a recent topic of study, specifically to the ankle joint to provide walking assistance and enable those to walk for longer distances. However, no study has investigated how to teach persons to use these assistive devices to greatest benefit. This study aims to determine the optimal settings and feedback with an ankle exoskeleton in order to teach a person with a stroke to use the device optimally.
You will be asked to participate in 1-16 testing sessions at UNC-Chapel Hill. You will need to wear comfortable shoes that can be laced up for the testing session. You will start by filling out a questionnaire about your overall behavior, mood, and memory (participants with stroke). We will then do some brief tests of your movements and coordination and have you walk across a 16-foot mat that records your walking speed. The investigators will next attach small, reflective balls to your pelvis, thighs, calves, and shoes. These small balls act as a way to capture walking data while you are in the lab. Finally, we will place sensors on your muscles to measure their activity. You will be asked to walk at a comfortable speed on the treadmill for five minutes to practice, and 20 minutes to collect data on different walking conditions. We will show you a graph on a TV that is mounted in front of the treadmill. The graph will show you how far you are stepping through with the limb wearing an exo. We will ask you to reach certain targets on the graph. If completing the additional training (participants with stroke), we will do the same type of testing on flat ground over sensors that are mounted in the floor. You will be asked to make several passes over this specific part of the ground before the initial training, after the initial training, and then once again after three months of the training.
Requirements for healthy volunteers are different than for those with a specific condition. If you are interested in becoming a healthy volunteer for this study, use the below categories to determine if you are able to participate.
ReGaiN Laboratory
Medical School Wing D (UNC-Chapel Hill)
336 Emergency Room Dr, Chapel Hill, NC, 27514, USA
Michael Lewek
Allied Health - Physical Therapy
Clinical or Medical
Observational
Healthy Volunteer or General Population
21-0929