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Improving in the quality of life by expanding functionality and durability while continually reducing the fabrication costs and maintaining the possibility of local fabrication, these are the four key design requirements for lower-limb prosthetics with humanitarian applications. Currently, however, there are few foot prostheses that meet these requirements. The solutions available world-wide include...
The purpose of this paper was to design and construction of ankle movement machine for the hemiplegic patients. This machine has adopted the principle of passive and assistive motion exercise for the patient. The designed machine composed of 3 main parts: 1) the set of foot movement consists of machine supporting foot systems and DC motor, 2) the hardware part comprises of microcontroller Arduino...
This paper describes the performance of a hexapod robot that uses low level leg reflexes to aid in walking over uneven terrain, and is currently being developed at the University of Johannesburg. The goal of this research is a robot able to deploy in both the inspection and search and rescue roles, within an underground mine environment. The robot has six legs with three degrees of freedom per leg,...
In this paper the design of a rig capable to simulate the dynamic response of an energy storing and returning composite prosthetic foot during amputee running is considered. It has been assumed that the amputee/prosthesis system can be modelled as a spring/mass system. Therefore the rig has been designed to allow the applied mass, input force and foot contact point of various feet designs to be varied...
In this paper the validation of a rig capable of simulating the dynamic response of an energy storing and returning composite prosthetic foot during amputee running is considered. It is shown that the rig can simulate the running action of an amputee runner and return similar ground contact time. It has also been shown that if a small input force is applied in a timed and sympathetic manner to the...
Predicting location of fracture in human bones has been a keen area of research for the past few decades. A variety of tests for hardness, deformation and strain field measurement have been conducted in the past; but considered insufficient due to various limitations. Researchers therefore have proposed further studies due to inaccuracies in measurement methods, testing machines and experimental errors...
The quantification of postural sway during the unipedal stance test is one of the essentials of posturography. A shift of center of pressure (CoP) is an indirect measure of postural sway and also a measure of a person's ability to maintain balance. A widely used method in laboratory settings to calculate the sway of body center of mass (CoM) is through an ellipse that encloses 95% of CoP trajectory...
Rehabilitation of disabled persons who have lost their lower limbs due to various reasons and the ensuring to them the opportunity an active lifestyle is an important social task. It can be solved by the widespread introduction in the rehabilitation practice a low-cost intelligent prostheses, the functionality of which depends not only on the design type, but also, not least, from the realized control...
Leg length discrepancy (LLD) refers to the medical condition where legs are of different length. This condition might affect gait and posture, and may lead to various orthopaedic disorders that can have serious repercussions on the individual, be it physiological, psychological, social, economic, or ergonomic. In order to ameliorate the rehabilitation of individuals with LLD, it is imperative to understand...
A novel device, named ‘Walk-Even’, was developed to measure human gait and provide real-time feedback to correct gait asymmetry. Gait asymmetry is usually exhibited in patients with stroke or with certain neurological disorders. Our device can measure the weight pressure distribution that the patient exerts on each foot, in addition to the gait time, swing time, and stance time of each leg while walking...
This research presents a novel numerically efficient method for calculating the Zero Moment Point (ZMP) of a bipedal walking robot, with a perspective of analysing its stability. In this context, a 1-DOF (ankle) structure has been constructed to resemble a robotic leg, with the force sensitive resistors (FSR) attached on its sole. By obtaining the sensory readings, ZMP has been calculated and analysed...
In this paper, We present a Self-Physical Rehabilitation System (SPRS) that assists patients to rehab correctly at home by themselves without physical therapists for solving the problem of access to medical service. SPRS uses KINECT to detect movement of patient's body while doing self-rehab and processing of data from motion detection of patients by KINECT to determine accuracy of gesture. This software...
Loss of balance leads to increased likelihood of falling for human locomotion. Determining the likelihood of falling for skiing locomotion is challenging because, unlike walking, normal locomotion is not clearly defined. One of the first learned styles of skiing is wedge style (WS). WS affords relatively easier balancing and speed control due to a wide base of support and greater resistance to forward...
The purpose of this study is to develop smart equipment to quantify plantar tactile sensibility for the early diagnosis and tracking of peripheral neuropathy caused by diabetes mellitus. In this paper, we offer a new testing system that is composed of a plantar tactile stimulation platform with a small moving contactor to stretch the skin tangentially, a response switch for each tactile stimulus,...
Small-scale hydraulics is ideal for powered human assistive devices including powered ankle foot orthoses because a large torque can be generated with an actuator that is small and light. A portable hydraulic ankle foot orthosis has been designed and is undergoing preliminary prototyping and engineering bench test evaluation. The device provides 90 Nm of ankle torque and has an operating pressure...
To the problem of making plans, arranging schedules and forecasting for transit agency, the passenger of public traffic is of importance. Compared with the existing application technology, a new passenger statistics solution is introduced. A kind of self-designed contact sensor pedal is used to sample footprint data and identify the direction when passenger gets on and off. The principles of kinesiology...
Golf Swing is one of the most difficult techniques in sports to perfect, and a smooth swing can't be achieved without a correct process of bodyweight transfer between the feet during the motion, which is known as weight shift in golf. As pointed out by various professional players and coaches, a proper weight shift is critical in hitting a shot with good accuracy and range, and therefore it would...
The testing method of level keeping performance achieved by reviewing distance change of hydraulic jar piston to ground is elaborated in this paper. Its theoretical basis is discussed, and software and hardware's engineering attainments are introduced. The testing result shows that this method can achieve the automatic and high efficient test of level keeping performance with high precision. Trouble...
Injury duo to falling has accounted for a significant portion of accident. In order to provide prompt first-aid service to the victims, automatic and wearable devices are necessary to report the accident as soon as it occurs. This paper presents an intelligent shoe system which can not only detect the fall, but also classify the fall direction, especially the serious backward fall. In the prototype,...
A simple algorithm for the calculation of the volume and surface area of a union of spheres of different radii is presented. It is based on the ideas published in S. Sastry et al, Phys. Rev. E, v.56, pp.5524-5532, 1997 [1], where they computed volume and surface of interatomic voids in simple liquids. They proposed to work with the intersection of Delaunay simplexes and the corresponding Voronoi polyhedra...
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