The Development of Portable Vibration Stimulation System to Improve the Abnormal Gait and the Effects on Posture Stability

Research to improve postural stability is being conducted by stimulating somatosensory, because somatosensory is important sensory information for postural stability with visual and vestibular. But, most of previous research has limitation such as the injury of the skin to which electrodes are attached, patient's discomfort of pain due to electrical stimulation. Also, there is a limit on stability. Accordingly, to overcome the disadvantages of the existing position balance and gait disorders and the weaknesses of the past researches, a portable somatosensory stimulation system was developed in this research to treat abnormal gait through the use of a small inertial sensor and the application of a vibration stimulus. And then we conducted effects evaluation about developed system. As a result, we confirmed that abnormal gait pattern induce normal gait pattern.