Advisory Committee Chair
Alan Eberhardt
Document Type
Thesis
Date of Award
2021
Degree Name by School
Master of Science in Biomedical Engineering (MSBME) School of Engineering
Abstract
People with mobility impairments caused by conditions such as cerebral palsy (CP),stroke, and spina bifida have difficulty achieving high levels of exercise. The lack of exercise can lead to secondary conditions such as diabetes, obesity, and cardiovascular diseases. Gait-training devices are already commercially available; however, they are not fit for home use and are expensive. Therefore, there exists a need for an affordable gaittraining device that is compact and promotes exercise and rehabilitation in a home-setting. A motorized gait-training elliptical dubbed the “Motogaitor,” was designed by students to address the needs of people with mobility impairments. In this present study, we aimed to test methodologies to obtain reaction forces from load cells and marker trajectories from a motion capture system to apply an inverse dynamics routine to quantify net joint moments during walking and while using the Motogaitor. We tested the device on one healthy user and collected ground reaction forces and marker trajectories, which were later used in OpenSim in applying the inverse dynamics routine to obtain frontal and sagittal plane joint moments. We further tested the effects of differential stride lengths during Motogaitor exercise by changing the length of the crank arm on either side of the elliptical. We also created a model that simulates the effects of CP on children while performing the kinematic motion of the Motogaitor. Our results indicate that Motogaitor exercise generates sagittal plane moments similar to what has been reported in literature. Peak frontal plane moments did not exceed the peaks seen in over-ground walking although they had similar patterns. Lastly, increasing the length of the crank arm causes a descriptive reduction in the internal moments generated and decreasing its length reverses the effects.
Recommended Citation
Abuhussein, Ezzuddin, "Applying Inverse Dynamics To A Biomechanical Model To Determine The Safety Of The Motogaitor" (2021). All ETDs from UAB. 675.
https://digitalcommons.library.uab.edu/etd-collection/675