New device improves mobility among seniors through arm movement

A photo of a research subject walking with researchers in UMaine's Field House

April 11, 2025 Aging Research, Medicine, Outreach, Research

Aging can impair people’s ability to maintain their balance while walking, increasing the risk for falls and injuries. One method for improving motor skills for walking is through training or rehabilitating gait — a person’s walking pattern.

With the population of Maine — the oldest in the nation — growing older, a team of University of Maine researchers, led by Ph.D. candidate Ines Khiyara, developed a new device that improves gait, and therefore mobility, among seniors by targeting an overlooked aspect of gait training: arm movement.

The device, a small wearable haptic feedback system, attaches to the user’s arms and sends vibrations telling them when to move their arms. The vibrations guide users to swing their arms in a specific rhythm based on their individual walking pace, helping them increase or reduce their arm cycle time, which inversely affects their walking speed.

Ines Khiyara:
The population is aging. One of the biggest factor for them is falling. Falling can be due to imbalance in their walking, so we’re trying to correct that balance. If you don’t have your arms swinging, then you can lose balance. When you try to stay in balance, you move your arms like this or use your arms to keep balance. Using the arms when walking is very important.

Essentially, the system will send vibrations on the arms and send a certain rhythm that the person has to follow. We’re hoping that they will swing their arms more.

Laurie Dean:
They did a test. My walk had sped up just from doing those eight laps. She could see my improvement in that short time in her data.

Kay Voyer:
I walk every day. For me, having the most efficiency swinging my arms works.

Ines Khiyara:
The person has to coordinate their arms with the vibration. The goal is to, as soon as they feel the vibration on one arm, to swing that arm and then let it swing backwards naturally. Then they’ll feel it on the other arm, swing the other arm, and keep repeating that in a certain rhythm, whether the rhythm is fast or slow.

Kay Voyer:
I noticed that when I was swinging my arms whenever I was walking, that I was more balanced. I didn’t feel like I was going to fall over. I am very tall, so falls are not a good thing for me. [laughs]

Ines Khiyara:
If you look at some of the statistics, there is about one in four older adults that fall every day in America. One in five of these falls can lead to a head injury or death through the injuries that they experience when falling. It’s pretty important for them, and also it’s important to keep an independent way of living.

The goal at the end would be to make it a commercial product where people can use the system to train on their own and hopefully prevent an abnormal gait.

Walking requires coordinated arm and leg movements. Current methods for gait training focus on improving leg movements but often overlook the importance of arm movement, particularly arm swing, which impacts stability, balance and the efficiency of energy use while walking.

With its small size, low cost and accessible use, researchers hope their wearable haptic cueing system could someday be used for at-home gait training and be incorporated into existing rehabilitation practices.

“This could help older adults walk more confidently and safely, lowering their risk of falls and helping them stay independent — not just in Maine, but anywhere aging populations are growing,” said Khiyara, who is studying mechanical engineering with a concentration in biomechanics and biorobotics.

Khiyara conducted the study using a wearable haptic cueing system developed in her lab, under the supervision of her Ph.D. advisor, Babak Hejrati, associate professor of mechanical engineering.

The research team tested their device through a study involving 20 participants between the ages of 65 and 92, with an average age of 73. When the device provided feedback, the participants immediately swung their arms forward, synchronizing their arm swing with the rhythmic cues. The coordination between participants’ arm and leg movements improved and, as a result, so did their gait speed and symmetry. Participants also reported feeling more balanced.

Researchers reported their findings in a recent paper published in the academic journal Annals of Biomedical Engineering.

This new device will be one of two incorporated into a comprehensive wearable robotic system that enables home-based and independent walking training for older adults. Spearheaded by Hejrati, also director of the Biorobotics and Biomechanics Laboratory, this system will be able to help induce proper whole body response and enhance walking ability. The research also examines how the neural circuits that control limb movements interact while walking at different speeds to produce coordinated arm and leg movements in subjects without mobility issues.

This line research is backed by grants that Hejrati received, including a $551,912 National Science Foundation CAREER Award — one of the organization’s most prestigious awards in support of early-career faculty — gifted to Hejrati in 2022, as well as a $432,000 grant from the National Institute on Aging allocated in 2024.

Contact: Marcus Wolf, 207.581.3721; marcus.wolf@maine.edu