Application of Local EMG-Driven FES to Incompletely Paralyzed Lower Extremities

For FES control of incompletely paralyzed lower extremities, various rule-based methods have been proposed. However, the necessity for adequate reliability of sensors and walking phase detection have made such systems difficult to be widely used clinically. In this report, a simple "local EMG-driven FES" system is proposed and shown to be effective in knee extension FES for incomplete paralyses. In this scheme, e.g., knee extensor is electrically stimulated according to the magnitude of measured voluntary EMG from the same muscle, which is partially paralysed. Apparently this scheme is applicable only to incomplete paralyses, however, the number of corresponding patients is not small and the method is applicable not only to walking, but also to other daily activities such as transfer from bed to wheelchair or standing-up, without any control-mode selection for each consecutive activity to aid, because those EMG reflect the neural commands from the brain.