Interview: Lokomat Inventor Gery Golombo, PhD Visits Spaulding Rehab

Dr. Gery Colombo, inventor of the Lokomat visited Spaulding Rehab on December 18, 2008. I was invited to meet him by Paolo Bonato, Spaulding's Director of the Motion Analysis Lab.

Dr. Gery Colombo, PhD (left), Bill Warner (right)

I did a series of interviews with Dr. Colombo, starting with how the Lokomat came about.

Gery talks about what was hard and what turned out to be easy in building the Lokomat. It always seems to be different than what you think when you get started.

Dr. Colombo gives us a little tour of the Lokomat, and a look at the cuff system that turned out to be one of the hardest parts to get right in the design.

One of the key elements of the Lokomat is the system that "unweights" the person walking. Since I had worked way back in the '80s with mechanical pen plotters, I was very interested in the details of how the unweighting system works. When I walked on the machine, I could tell that something pretty clever was going on, since the machine always seemed to "know" what to do to have the harness hold you up just the right amount. Dr. Colombo explains how their spring and actuator system works.
 
In all, I had about 15 sessions on the Lokomat. The improvement was tremendous. On my first day on the machine, I walked about 600 meters, at a speed of about 1.8 km/hour. By my last session, I walked for 32 minutes, covered 1400 meters, and reached a speed of 3.0 km/hour. I also began carrying more of my own weight as I progressed. At the last session, I carried on my own legs about 80 kg out of my total 100 kg weight. The machine compensated for the remaining 20 kg.
 
I still walk with crutches, but my speed is faster, and my range is longer. I find I'm much more willing to venture farther using my crutches, and I also find that my back no longer hurts when I walk.
 
The Lokomat has been the best piece of rehab equipment that I have experienced since I got hurt 34 years ago, in 1974.