Electrical stimulation feedback for gait control of walking simulator

When a paraplegic patient walks with the aid of an exoskeleton, the patient can only follow the preset walking trajectory and cannot receive any lower limb sensory feedback. This paper firstly proposes an index finger interface that allows a paraplegic patient to control the walking trajectory through an index finger voluntarily. The proposed interface consists of two rotatable links and one ring, and the interface is installed in the front of a crutch handle. The user controls the foot position of the foot position via a ring while keeping the balance with the crutch. On this basis, this paper also proposes an electrical stimulation feedback pattern that conveys the foot position to the user to assist the walking control. The electrical stimulation device contains 20 stimulation points that correspond to the spatial position. The electrical stimulus presents the foot position by switching the stimulation frequency and the stimulation position. For safety reasons, we conducted a preliminary study of the interface and feedback model with a healthy subject and a walking robot. We validated the effectiveness of the index finger interface and the electrical stimulation pattern through three experiments:1)pseudo-trajectory recognition under electrical stimulation feedback condition, 2) robot walking control under visual feedback condition, and 3) robot walking control under electrical stimulation feedback condition.