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As a partially invasive and clinically obtained neural signal, the electrocorticogram (ECoG) provides a unique opportunity to study cortical processing in humans in vivo. Functional connectivity mapping based on the ECoG signal can provide insight into epileptogenic zones and putative cortical circuits. We describe the first application of time-varying dynamic Bayesian networks (TVDBN) to the ECoG...
Our goal is to enhance the quality of life of patients with hemiplegia by means of an active motion support system that assists the impaired motion such as to make it as close as possible to the motion of an able bodied person. We have developed the Robot Suit HAL (Hybrid Assistive Limb) to actively support and enhance the human motor functions. The purpose of the research presented in this paper...
This paper presents the development of new prismatic actuation approach and its application in human-safe humanoid head design. To reduce actuator output impedance and mitigate unexpected external shock, the prismatic actuation method uses cables to drive a piston with preloaded spring. By leveraging the advantages of parallel manipulator and cable-driven mechanism, the developed neck has a parallel...
In an aging society, social demands for home-based rehabilitation and assistive technologies by healthcare and welfare services are globally increasing. The progress of quality-of-life technologies and rehabilitation science is a very important and urgent issue for elderly and disabled individuals as well as for their caregivers. Thus, there is a substantial need to develop simple bedside apparatuses...
This paper proposes a new configuration for a hybrid-FES gait restoration system, and presents a combination of simulation and experiment that support the feasibility of the proposed approach. Gait simulation results are presented that indicate the majority of load bearing and the majority of power for gait is provided by the legs (i.e., quadriceps muscle stimulation). Based on these simulations,...
This paper presents the preliminary design of a new dexterous upper-limb prosthesis provided with a novel anthropomorphic hand, a compact wrist based on bevel gears and a modular forearm able to cover different levels of upper-limb amputations. The hand has 20 DoFs and 11 motors, with a dexterous three fingered subsystem composed by a fully actuated thumb, and an hybrid index and middle fingers to...
This paper describes an approach for the real-time detection of stumble for use in an intelligent lower limb prosthesis, using accelerometers mounted on the prosthesis, and also describes an algorithm that classifies the stumble response as either an elevating or lowering type response. In order to validate the proposed approach, the investigators collected stumble data on 10 healthy subjects using...
In this study, we present the conceptual design of a fully-passive transfemoral prosthesis. The proposed design is inspired by the analysis of the musculo-skeletal activity of the healthy human leg. In order to realize an energy efficient device, we introduce three storage elements, which are responsible of the energetic coupling between the knee and the ankle joints. Simulation results show that...
Advanced myoelectric hand prostheses aim to reproduce as much of the human hand's functionality as possible. Development of the control system of such a prosthesis is strongly connected to its mechanical design; the control system requires accurate information on the prosthesis' structure and the surrounding environment, which can make development difficult without a finalized mechanical prototype...
Weighted LS-SVM is normally used for function estimation from highly corrupted data in order to decrease the impact of outliers. However, this method is limited in size and big time series should be segmented in smaller groups. Therefore, border discontinuities represent a problem in the final estimated function. Several methods such as committee networks or multilayer networks of LS-SVMs are used...
One of the most important elements for the rehabilitation process regards to the correct evaluation of the biomechanical and the electrophysiological responses. This evaluation must be done during the therapy. In general, the improvements achieved by the treatment are slightly and difficult to be distinguished. This is a difficult task when the changes in the signals obtained by the bio-amplifiers...
During laparoscopic surgery, grasping of large body organs such as spleen, kidney, and liver, is a difficult task using conventional instruments. This paper describes the design and analysis of a novel actuated endoscopic grasper for manipulation of large internal organs. The designed instrument resembles a miniaturized three fingered hand with each finger consisting of two links. It could pass through...
The design of robots required to work in the close vicinity or physically interact with humans such as humanoids machines, rehabilitation or human performance augmentation systems should not follow the traditional design rule `stiffer is better'. Safety is a particularly vital concern in these systems and to maximize it a different design approach should be used. The role of compliance in improving...
Human gait has been proven to be of importance when trying to recognize people. In addition gait also conveys the emotional state of someone. The present study propose to objectively and systematically analyze gait data to highlight features that can characterize someone and the emotion conveyed. Rather than using gait stance phase, frequency, footstep length... we use the inverse kinematics data...
Parallel cascade identification (PCI) is used as a dynamic estimation tool to map surface electromyography recordings from upper-arm muscles to the elbow-induced force at the wrist. PCI mapping is composed of parallel connection of a cascade of linear dynamic and nonlinear static blocks. Experimental comparison between PCI and previously published orthogonalization scheme has shown superior force...
Different biological labs conduct similar experiments on same diseases. It is highly desirable to have a better model based on more experimental results than that on a single result. In this paper, we propose a method for integrating microarray data from multiple sources for building classification models. To test the method, we use three real world microarray data sets from different labs with different...
Use of neural activity to predict kinematic variables such as position, velocity and direction etc of movements has been implemented in real-time control of robotic systems and computer cursors. In everyday life, however, we generate variable amounts of force to manipulate objects of different inertial properties or to follow the same trajectory under different external dynamic environments like air...
In this contribution we present a method that extends the Canonical Correlation Analysis for two groups of variables to the case of multiple conditions. Contrary to the extensions in literature based on augmenting the number of variable groups, the addition of conditions allows for a more robust estimate of the canonical correlation structure inherently present in the data. Algorithms to solve the...
An extension of the original implementation of JADE, named eJADE hereafter, was proposed in 2001 to perform independent component analysis for any combination of statistical orders greater than or equal to three. More precisely, eJADE relies on the joint diagonalization of a set of several cumulant matrices corresponding to different matrix slices of one or several higher order cumulant tensors. An...
Modern methods of information and communication that use web technologies provide an opportunity to facilitate closer communication between patients and healthcare providers, allowing a joint management of chronic diseases. This paper describes a web-based technological solution to support the management of inherited bleeding disorders integrating, diffusing and archiving large sets of data relating...
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