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Smart Walker

Developing a smart walker that allows for monitoring of patient's rehabilitation progress

Project Overview

Patients recovering from Traumatic Brain Injury (TBI) often lose their ability to walk and must undergo Physical therapy to rehabilitate their legs and neural pathways involved in walking. This is a two-week-long process that involves a number of therapies. As they undergo therapy, they have to perform a 10m walk test, in which they walk 10 meters, and the practitioner times them to see how they progress day by day. The biggest challenge when tracking progression is the fact that there is no commercially available method of testing the weight that the patient puts on the walker, as well as human error being involved in manual time trials. This is problematic for the client because Insurance providers need precise metrics in order to cover costs, and patients have no way to track their own progress as they undergo therapy. The system will include load cells to measure the weight put on the walker, and sensors that track movement speed, and distance traveled. This system will connect to a mobile device interface that will allow storage and display of the data. This will allow the client to accurately monitor progress, giving insurance providers and clients concrete data to show progression. Testing will include a series of trials that will measure: the accuracy of the distance and speed sensors across a known distance, and a series of known weights on the walker, to determine the accuracy and sensitivity of the load cells. By designing a system that can track distance, speed and weight accurately, we hope to change the future of stroke and TBI recovery for the better.

Team Picture

Team photo: Xicheng Yang, Nicolas Mandonaldo,Shreya Venkatesh, Navya Jain
Team photo: Xicheng Yang, Nicolas Mandonaldo,Shreya Venkatesh, Navya Jain

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