Background
Body weight supported treadmill training (BWSTT) has become a widely used rehabilitation technique for individuals with walking disabilities due to neurological disorders such as stroke and spinal cord injury [
1‐
4].
Robotic devices have been developed to relieve physical therapists from the straineous and unergonomical burden of manual BWSTT [
5]. The Lokomat (Hocoma AG, Switzerland) [
6], the ReoAmbulator (Motorika, USA), and the Gait Trainer (Reha-Stim, Germany) are used in clinical practice to automate BWSTT by moving patients repetitively along pre-defined walking trajectories.
A growing body of studies shows that both manual BWSTT and robot-aided treadmill training improve gait quality [
7‐
15]. While some of these studies found advantages of robot-aided treadmill training compared to BWSTT [
9,
11,
14], others found conventional treadmill training to be more effective [
12,
13].
The studies in favor of robot-aided treadmill training focused more closely on non-ambulatory patients, while the studies reporting better outcome of conventional treadmill training included mainly ambulatory patients. These results suggest that currently, robot-aided treadmill training is most effective for severely affected, non-ambulatory patients, whereas it may not be ideal for more advanced, ambulatory patients. In contrast to these ambulatory patients, who may benefit more from other approaches like over-ground training, patients in the transition phase between being non-ambulatory and ambulatory still require much physical support during training. This situation demonstrates the need to improve current rehabilitation robots in a way that extends their spectrum of effective treatment to functionally more advanced patients. Such an improvement would allow patients to benefit from robot-aided treadmill training up to a point where they can safely and efficiently perform over-ground training. Thus, rehabilitation robots would be able to optimally support patients in their progression through their different stages of recovery.
In most of the studies mentioned above, the rehabilitation robots were controlled in a very simple way. A pre-recorded gait pattern was replayed by the robot as accurately as possible. This
position control approach allows the patient to remain passive during the training [
16] and reduces kinematic variability to a minimum [
17]. However, both active participation and kinematic variability are considered as important promotors of motor learning and rehabilitation [
18‐
23]. fMRI studies comparing training tasks with active and passive movements have shown stronger cortical activation and subsequently also more cortical reorganization leading to more effective formation of motor memory when subjects where contributing actively to the trained movements compared to being passively moved [
18,
19]. In a review of robotic therapy approaches based on these findings, Dromerick et al. conclude that these approaches are effective, but rigorous comparisons with traditional techniques still need to be performed [
20].
Bernstein emphasized the crucial role of kinematic variability during motor learning ("repetition without repetition") based on practical experience and theoretical considerations [
21]. Lewek et al. have shown that kinematic variability as introduced by conventional treadmill training improved the coordination of intralimb kinematics in ambulatory stroke patients while position-controlled robot-aided treadmill training with little kinematic variability did not [
22]. Huang and Krakauer argue that from a computational motor-learning perspective, robots should ensure the successful completion of movements, allowing the adapting human nervous system to identify combinations of sensory states and their transitions associated with the motor commands required for the movements [
23].
Therefore, researchers in the field of rehabilitation robotics believe that robotic control approaches, which increase active participation of the patients and allow more kinematic variability while still guaranteeing successful task execution, have the potential to substantially boost the efficacy of robot-aided rehabilitation, especially in functionally more advanced patients. Numerous research groups have been working on these
patient-cooperative control strategies [
24‐
34]. While there have been extensive tests of control strategies that increase patient participation during training for upper-extremity robots [
35,
36], most of the approaches for lower extremity-robots have only been evaluated in single case studies with patients or in proof-of-concept experiments with healthy volunteers.
In a recent publication, our group has demonstrated a patient-cooperative control strategy ("Path Control") for the Lokomat which allows free timing of leg movements while ensuring that the spatial kinematics of the legs stay within definable desired limits [
37]. We could show that healthy volunteers participated more actively and with more--especially temporal--variability than in a classical, position controlled training mode. Moreover, we were able to modulate the level of activity by an additional supportive "flow" that did not reduce the amount of movement variability when providing more support. We assume that the ability to modulate the level of required activity will be an important feature to adapt the controller to the individual capabilities of patients, particularly of patients transitioning from a non-ambulatory to an ambulatory state during their rehabilitation process. Finally, we evaluated the feasibility of the path control strategy with 15 individuals with chronic incomplete spinal cord injury (iSCI). Assuming a minimal level of voluntary motor control, the patients were able to train with the patient-cooperatively controlled Lokomat.
In the present paper, we have investigated if the short-term effects found for healthy volunteers do also translate to spinal cord injured patients. More specifically, we have posed the following research questions: (1) Does patient-cooperative robot-aided treadmill training lead to more active participation of individuals with iSCI than classical, position-controlled training? (2) Can we deliberately modulate the activity required by the iSCI patient during the training? (3) Can we increase the variability of the iSCI patients' leg movements while still maintaining functional gait?
Discussion
Active participation
Basic neuroscience studies have shown that motor learning is more effective when human subjects practice movements actively rather than being passively moved [
18,
19,
48,
49]. Although the underlying mechanisms are not well understood yet, this principle is generally translated also to robotic neurorehabilitation [
23], where researchers aim at making patients participate as actively as possible during training.
Our evaluation has shown that iSCI patients participated with higher muscle activity (Fig.
6) and higher cardiovascular effort (increased heart rate, Fig.
5) when they were training under the path control condition (C
OOP) than under the position control condition (P
OS). Theoretically, this increased activity could also be caused by the robot generating torques opposed to the movements of the patient. While there are studies investigating the effects of such robotic resistance [
50], our goal was to obtain active, unobstructed participation of the patients. The fact that interaction torques did not increase under the path control conditions (Fig.
4) shows that the patients were indeed contributing actively to the movements and not working against robotic resistance.
We have included a condition with soft impedance control (S
OFT) as a benchmark for the current state-of-the-art of patient-cooperative Lokomat training in clinical practice. The impedance setting (
Khip = 192
Nm/
rad,
Kknee = 144
Nm/
rad, these values correspond to a "guidance force" setting of 40% in the commercial Lokomat software) for this condition was chosen based on discussions with the physical therapy staff at University Hospital Balgrist (Zurich, Switzerland) about the lowest impedance settings they use during clinical trainings on a regular basis. Interestingly, it appears that the remaining temporal guidance (Fig.
3, right) in this compliant control mode still kept the patients in a rather passive state: Only the vastus medialis muscle was significantly more active in compliant control mode than in position control mode. All other parameters did not differ significantly (Fig.
5, Fig.
6). This observation is in line with theoretical models of human-robot interactions which predict that the human motor system will "slack" whenever possible to reduce its effort [
51‐
54]. Apparently, the free timing of movements provided by the path control strategy which requires patients to actively propel their legs through the gait pattern makes patients less likely to "slack" than the timing-based soft impedance control mode used under condition S
OFT.
Thus, the iSCI patients in our experiment participated more actively during training only with the patient-cooperative path control strategy.
Modulation of activity by additional support
Unlike in our study with healthy volunteers [
37], we were not able to modulate activity by adjusting the amount of additional support. Apparently, subjects reacted very inconsistently to the increased support in condition C
OOP+. While for some subjects the additional support was actually helpful, others felt "pushed forward" and had to put more effort in actively canceling this "perturbation". This effect may be the reason for the large variability of heart rate increase under the condition C
OOP+ (Fig.
5).
As already seen in the feasibility experiment with iSCI subjects in [
37], iSCI patients have diverse needs for support, usually limited to specific gait phases. Therefore, the "global" support parameter
ks which determines the intensity of the supportive "flow" for the whole gait cycle appears to be not sufficient to adapt the support for iSCI patients. For an impedance controller based on a reference pattern with fixed timing, gait-phase dependent adaptation of controller impedance has been demonstrated by Emken et al. [
33]. For the path control strategy evaluated in this paper, which allows free timing of movements, an automatic adaptation algorithm that identifies the individual deficits of a patient as implemented for the upper extremity by Wolbrecht et al. [
55] could possibly improve the training mode by providing support that is better tailored to the individual patients.
Movement variability
Variability and the possibility to make errors is considered an essential component of practice for motor learning. Bernstein's demand that training should be "repetition without repetition" [
21] is still considered a crucial requirement, which is also supported by recent advances in computational models describing motor learning [
23]. More specifically, a recent study by Lewek et al. [
22] has shown that intralimb coordination after stroke was improved by manual training after stroke, which allowed kinematic variability, but not by position-controlled Lokomat training, which reduced kinematic variability to a minimum.
The analysis of spatiotemporal variability shows that while spatial variability is significantly increased in all three compliant modes SOFT, COOP+, and COOP compared to the stiff position control condition POS, temporal variability is only significantly increased in the path control modes COOP+ and COOP.
The virtual tunnel of the path control strategy allowed spatial variability to an extent that still ensured a functional gait pattern, therefore, it did not substantially increase the patients' risk of stumbling.
Thus, the path control strategy does not only technically provide free timing of movements, but iSCI patients also showed more temporal variability in their movements than with position control (POS) or with the compliant, but timing-controlled impedance control (SOFT).
Limitations
Limitations of the path control strategy
It should be noted that a constant treadmill speed was used throughout the presented experiments. Thus, the temporal freedom of the path control mode were limited to the swing phase. Nevertheless, a substantial increase in temporal variability could be detected. To increase patient interactivity during training, we will combine the path control strategy with approaches which adapt the treadmill speed according to the intention of patients [
56].
The fixed walking pattern that defines the spatial movement path may not be ideal for every patient. As in position-controlled Lokomat training, the pattern can be adapted manually by the therapist. However, it is not guaranteed that a pattern close to the "healthy" pattern of an individual patient can be achieved. For hemiparetic patients, it would be possible to derive a desired path for the affected leg from observing the unaffected leg, as proposed by Vallery et al. [
32]. For iSCI patients, an adaptive re-shaping of the path, similar to the approach by Jezernik et al. [
25], may improve the applicability of the path control strategy.
Limitations of the study
The present study only investigated the reactions of iSCI patients to different controllers during a single training session with short exposure to the different training modes. Clearly, the long term effects of the different training modes are much more important and should be investigated in future work. However, we believe that verifying the intended, presumably beneficial effects in a single training session was an important first step in preparation of a long term trial.
We deliberately included patients with a wide range of ambulatory skills to gain insights into the feasibility of path control training with patients at different skill levels. The distribution of walking skills comprised four fully ambulatory patients with a WISCI score of 20, indicating that they were able to independently ambulate 10 m without any walking aids. Furthermore, six patients had reduced, but good ambulatory skills (WISCI score between 12 and 19) and were able to independently ambulate 10 m using appropriate walking aids (crutches and braces). Finally, there was one patient in the transition range between non-ambulatory and ambulatory, indicated by a WISCI score of 5. As we expect the most practical benefits of patient-cooperative control strategies for patients in the transition range between non-ambulatory and ambulatory, more data regarding the feasibility with functionally more restricted patients would be desirable. Thus, future studies with the path control strategy should more explicitly focus on patients within this functional range.
As we planned to include patients with very different walking skills, we decided that it would have been very difficult to reliably standardize a control condition where patients would have walked without assistance or manual assistance of a therapist. Therefore, we performed our experiments without such a condition which would of course have allowed very interesting further analyses. Future studies which will be focusing on patients from a more narrow functional range. As these patients will have similar--and thus standardizable--needs for support during manual assisted treadmill training, it will then be feasible to include such a condition.
The limited number of patients included in the study does not provide sufficient statistical power to stratify patients according to their disability levels, which might reduce the variability in the results and provide further insights into the different effects of the evaluated control strategies on different groups of patients. The focus of the study on iSCI patients leaves it an open question whether similar results can be expected for patients with stroke or other pathologies. The feasibility of patient-cooperative training and the immediate effects for such patients needs to be investigated separately.
The choice of heart rate as a measure of effort was made because it did put a relatively low additional burden on the patients during the experiment. As discussed by Pennycott et al., heart rate may be influenced by emotional state, pain and hydration level, whereas oxygen uptake would be a more robust measure of effort during robot-aided gait training [
57]. These factors may explain the large variability under the condition C
OOP+ where some patients may have been irritated by the increased amount of robotic support. However, as the general trend of the heart rate results is consistent with the results regarding the muscle activity of the patients, we believe that the method has captured the patients' effort in a sufficiently robust way for the sake of our research questions.
Conclusions
Patients with incomplete spinal cord injury participated more actively and with larger kinematic variability in patient-cooperative robot-aided gait training than in non-cooperative, position-controlled robot-aided gait training. Free timing of movements appears to be an important feature of patient-cooperativeness, as a compliant impedance control mode with fixed timing did not significantly increase active participation, but the path control strategy with free timing did.
Future development should focus on providing adaptive, patient-specific support to make training with patient-cooperative control strategies feasible for a larger population of patients. Future clinical evaluation should compare the effects of patient-cooperative robot-aided training versus non-cooperative robot-aided training and manual BWSTT in a long term randomized clinical trial.
1The following notation is used throughout this paper: all vectors of joint angles and torques consist of two elements, the first one for the hip joint and the second one for the knee joint, e.g. q = (q(1), q(2))T = (qhip, qknee)T. The control algorithms discussed in this paper are always defined for a single leg. The second leg is controlled by an independent second instance of the respective control algorithm.
2The equivalent end-point stiffness of the exoskeleton depends on the joint angles and the direction of force application and, thus, can not be reflected in a single, representative number. The relationship between end-point stiffness and joint stiffness in a lower-limb exoskeleton is discussed in [
41].
3The therapist was instructed to adjust
ks to the minimal value that enabled the patient to walk in the path control mode. The individual support gains which were used under this condition are listed in Tab.
1.
Authors' contributions
AD and AC contributed equally to this work. AD and AC performed the measurements of all patients, data analysis, statistical analysis, and drafted the manuscript. RR participated in the design and coordination of the study and assisted with drafting the manuscript. All authors read and approved the final manuscript.