Projects

Gait Enhancing Mobile Shoe

Certain types of central nervous system damage, such as stroke, can cause an asymmetric walking gait. One rehabilitation method uses a split-belt treadmill to help rehabilitate impaired individuals. The split-belt treadmill causes each leg to move at a different speed while in contact with the ground. The split-belt treadmill has been shown to help rehabilitate walking impaired individuals on the treadmill, but there is one distinct drawback; the corrected gait does not transfer well to walking over ground. To increase the gait transference to walking over ground, I designed and built a passive shoe that admits a motion similar to that felt when walking on a split-belt treadmill. The gait enhancing mobile shoe (GEMS) alters the wearer's gait by causing one foot to move backward during the stance phase while walking over ground. No external power is required since the shoe mechanically converts the wearer's downward and horizontal forces into a backward motion. This shoe allows a patient to walk over ground while experiencing the same gait altering effects as felt on a split-belt treadmill, which should aid in transferring the corrected gait to walking in natural environments. This work is funded by the Eunice Kennedy Shriver National Institute of Child Health & Human Development, NIH NICHD, award number R21HD066200 and is in collaboration with Amy Bastian at the Kennedy Krieger Institute and Erin Vasudevan at the Moss Rehabilitation Research Institute.