Integrating hip exosuit and FES for lower limb rehabilitation in a simulation environment

Lower-limb rehabilitation for spinal cord injury (SCI) and other motor disorders is often a lengthy process for the patient. The combination of active orthoses and functional electrical stimulation (FES) promises to accelerate therapy outcome, while simultaneously reducing the physical burden of the therapist. In this work, we propose a controller to a hybrid neuroprosthesis (HNP) composed of a hip orthosis and FES-controlled knee motion. In our simulation analysis using a detailed musculoskeletal model, we use experimental data from an able-bodied subject during slow-speed walking to compare the performance provided by such a system. Furthermore, we analyzed the obtained results in comparison to gait data collected from experiments where we used an active hip orthosis. Although the knee stimulation controller still oscillated during gait, we acquired control results with errors smaller than five degrees. Besides, we were able to examine the performance at very slow speeds.