Development of the locomotor-like passive stepping movement device by injecting jet-water to foot sole

A lot of previous studies have developed various exercise methods and devices in order to provide exercise effective for maintaining good health. In particular, it is recently well-known that underwater gaittraining is a useful fitness movement especially for elderly person. The purpose of this study was to develop a device to induce locomotor-like stepping movements by injecting jet-water to foot sole of a person sitting in a bath. We then investigated the behavior of the leg joints caused by the fluid force in healthy subject. The result shows that the new device can induce reproducible locomotor-like stepping movement by effectively flexing hip, knee and ankle joints.