EMG and Kinematics Assessment of Postural Responses during Balance Perturbation on a 3D Robotic Platform: Preliminary Results in Children with Hemiplegia

Abstract

Dynamic posturography has been proposed as a valuable tool for the assessment of balance impairments. This paper compares the postural responses of healthy and hemiplegic children while keeping balance on a 3D robotic perturbed platform, addressed as Rotobit^3D. Dynamic postural responses are assessed by using surface EMG, recorded from four muscles of both legs, and lower limb kinematics. These preliminary results show that the used protocol is able to highlight significant differences in the postural responses, in terms of postural asymmetries between the less affected and more affected side for both electrophysiological and kinematic recordings.