Restoring standing capabilities with feedback control of functional neuromuscular stimulation following spinal cord injury

This paper reviews the use of Functional Neuromuscular Stimulation (FNS) to help people with spinal cord injuries stand. The goal is to create systems that allow hands-free standing, enabling users to perform tasks while leaning. Current systems mostly offer basic standing using pre-set stimulation patterns. More advanced control, like adjusting stimulation to maintain balance or lean, is mostly limited to labs. Further progress requires better motor control through FNS, advanced control systems that adapt to muscle fatigue, and consideration of the user's voluntary upper-body movements.

• 1
  Current clinical FNS standing systems can produce the muscle forces to rise from a chair and assume an upright standing posture with stimulation applied in an open-loop manner.
• 2
  Feedback control is needed to continually generate fine postural adjustments for leaning and maintaining balance while performing functional manual tasks in clinical settings.
• 3
  Model-based development for novel control schemes are proven and sensible approaches to prototype and test the basic operating efficacy of potentially complex and multi-faceted control systems.