The Wearable Cyborg – HAL is intended for use in therapy to improve patients’ physical functions.
Cybernics Treatment uses HAL to recover the wearer’s functions. The treatment focuses on spinal cord injury, stroke, and neuromuscular diseases.
Effects of Cyberdyne Treatment with HAL®
The Hybrid Assistive Limb® (HAL®, Cyberdyne, Japan) enables voluntary, user-driven ambulation via a neurologically controlled system based on bioelectrical impulses generated by the user. This enables for the repetitive execution of physiologically accurate gait patterns, which are required for rehabilitation in cases of neurologic motor impairment.
HAL® [Hybrid Assistive Limb®] –
- Establishes a healthy loop of signals
This product is intended to create a pathway for signals to reach the muscles and trigger a meaningful reaction through movement. This movement can be sensed by both the wearer and their brain, completing a signal loop that is critical in inducing neuroplasticity, which is required for good motor function. Medical practitioners may also perform product adjustments to help the wearer achieve their intended movements more readily or correct abnormal signals through customised therapeutic exercises that go beyond walking.
- Is made to fit right
Elements of this product such as leg lengths, hip widths, and foot sizes can precisely be adjusted to fit all individuals, enabling comfortable and effective treatment.
- Is controlled by Wearer’s Intent
This product, like all other HAL systems, responds to the wearer’s intent to move. The product’s non-invasive sensors can detect faint “bio-electrical signals” on the wearer’s skin surface, indicating their intention. Importantly, even for individuals who have trouble moving, this unique technique enables them to accomplish their desired movements using voluntary orders.
- Supports the ‘journey to independence
The product provides both the wearer and their healthcare provider with unique insight into the signal patterns generated by the wearer and essential information such as the center of balance and phases of the gait cycle. This information helps shape the treatment course that aims to maximise neuroplasticity and ultimately gain more independence.
- Rehabilitation/Recovery
The key to promoting functional improvement through Cyberdyne Treatment is not just transmitting voluntary command signals from the human brain to the musculoskeletal system via the spinal cord and peripheral nerves, but more so on the return of feedback from the sensation of actual movement to the human brain.
