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Automated rehabilitation
Hocoma is an internationally recognized pioneer and market leader in rehabilitation technology. The company from Volketswil in Zurich employs more than 150 people worldwide. It specializes in automated therapy devices for the rehabilitation of neurological movement disorders. The three most common causes are strokes, traumatic brain injury or paraplegia. As a result, patients have to relearn how to walk. Hocoma's therapy devices play a very important part in this.
It has been proven that in the case of a neurological disorder, the healthy areas of the brain and spinal cord can take over the functions of the affected areas. However, this requires a high training intensity consisting of many repetitions of the movement pattern to be relearned. Hocoma's therapy devices support patients in this task and are suitable for both adults and children.
When training with the Lokomat, patients are attached to a weight relief system so that they are practically hanging over the treadmill. This makes it possible to individually adjust how much weight is placed on the legs. The actual gait orthosis is then fitted to the legs with straps. This allows the legs to follow the treadmill synchronously. The patient always has direct visual feedback on the monitor about the current movement. The primary aim is to motivate the patient with playful exercises and thus encourage active participation in the therapy, which leads to faster therapeutic success.
With the Lokomat Pro, two additional motors for hip stabilization and rope suspension are added to the leg drives. This involves lateral control of the body's center of gravity, which should be positioned vertically above the supporting leg. The patient's upper body is therefore always moved sideways back and forth while walking using the additional two drives. These two motors are also controlled via the Accelnet AE2 drive controller in CST mode.
With the Erigo, even bedridden patients can be placed in an upright position. The patient is secured by a belt system so that therapy can be started at an early stage of rehabilitation, even in acute care. The advantage of the Erigo is that patients whose circulation is not stable enough for an upright position can still start therapy.
The legs are driven by two motors. The motors are controlled via the modular EtherCAT two-axis drive controller Accelnet AE2 from Parkem. It is characterized by its great flexibility, as it can control any DC or synchronous motors with a wide variety of encoder systems. With the Erigo, the motion commands are issued via EthercCAT in CST mode (cyclical torque specification). In addition to its outstanding control properties, the AE2 also scores points for its compact size.
