SBIR Phase I: Discrete Personal Assistance Orthotic Walking Aid

This Small Business Innovation Research (SBIR) Phase 1 project proposes to develop a discrete, powered, lower-extremity orthotic walking aid to restore function to the injured or disabled. While the majority of current similar systems aim to ?amplify? human strength and performance beyond normal, the proposed system will aim to restore mobility in aging, injured, or otherwise disabled people who maintain complete kinematic but insufficient kinetic functionality. This restored mobility will greatly enhance quality of life for those individuals with functional limitations and the aging population; helping to prevent falls and fractures, reducing the need for medical care, and thus reducing medical costs, and/or decreasing rehabilitation time. This next-generation robotic orthosis will replace walkers, wheel chairs, canes, stair climbers, and other assistive devices with a low-profile and discrete system that users will wear under clothing ? out of sight and out of mind. By enhancing an individual?s ability to stand and walk there are several additional benefits, which include preventing cardiovascular deconditioning, helping with weight loss, and providing the mechanical stimulus required to lessen the burden of osteoporosis. The near-term goal of the project is to address a select subset of unilateral knee muscle weakness pathologies while creating the framework that can be used with a broad spectrum of diseases and injuries. The ultimate goal of this investigational team is to employ this modular technology to develop clinical and consumer solutions on a pathology/injury specific basis to improve or restore function. The results of this work will impact the field of powered orthotics as well as increase the quality of life of the physically challenged and speed up recovery of the injured. The broader impact/commercial potential of this project will be enabled by employing an open-source software development kit which will be developed and made available to the research community so the core system can be rapidly adapted to other pathologies. The discrete personal assistance orthotic walking aid will become a platform from which researchers at other organizations can develop and implement robotics-based orthotic solutions to pathologies above and beyond what this project will focus on. While the majority of current systems aim to increase human capability, the proposed system aims to restore mobility in aging, injured, or otherwise disabled people who maintain complete but limited functionality. The results of this work will increase the quality of life of the disabled and speed up recovery of the injured.