A Novel Walking Cane With Haptic Biofeedback Reduces Degenerative Loading in the Arthritic Knee

• A haptic biofeedback cane was designed and manufactured to measure the user applied axial cane load, compare the load to the targeted 20% BW threshold, and then deliver a vibrotactile feedback in the cane handle when the loading was greater than threshold. The cane data acquisition was temporally synchronized to the motion analysis system and recorded axial cane loads at 100 Hz for later analysis. The haptic biofeedback cane consisted of a conventional bariatric walking cane (Patterson Medical Ltd) with a loadcell (Digi-Key100 LBS. Load Cell) placed inside a 3D printed modular cane foot. A microcontroller (Sparkfun™ Pro Micro), SD disk storage (Sparkfun™ OpenLog), eccentric rotating mass vibration motor (model 306-109, Precision Microdrives Limited), USB communications port, and battery completed the system.

Typical training cane loading training