Search results

The purpose of this paper is to implement a new process aimed at the design and production of orthopaedic devices fully manufacturable by additive manufacturing (AM). In this context, the use of generative algorithms for parametric modelling of additively manufactured textiles (AMTs) also has been investigated, and new modelling solutions have been proposed.

A new method for the design of customised elbow orthoses has been implemented. In particular, to better customise the elbow orthosis, a generative algorithm for parametric modelling and creation of a flexible structure, typical of an AMT, has been developed.

To test the developed modelling algorithm, a case study based on the design and production of an elbow orthosis made by selective laser sintering was investigated. The obtained results have demonstrated that the implemented algorithm overcomes many drawbacks typical of the traditional computer aided design (CAD) modelling approaches. The parametric CAD model of the orthosis obtained through the new approach is characterised by a flexible structure with no deformations or mismatches and has been effectively used to produce the prototype through AM technologies.

The obtained results present innovative elements of originality in the CAD modelling sector, which can contribute to solving problems related to modelling for AM in different application fields.

Aims to investigate medical rapid prototyping (medical RP) technology applications and methods based on reverse engineering (RE) and medical imaging data.

Medical image processing and RE are applied to construct three‐dimensional models of anatomical structures, from which custom‐made (personalized) medical applications are developed.

The investigated methods were successfully used for design and manufacturing of biomodels, surgical aid tools, implants, medical devices and surgical training models. More than 40 medical RP applications were implemented in Europe and Asia since 1999.

Medical RP is a multi‐discipline area. It involves in many human resources and requires high skills and know‐how in both engineering and medicine. In addition, medical RP applications are expensive, especially for low‐income countries. These practically limit its benefits and applications in hospitals.

In order to transfer medical RP into hospitals successfully, a good link and close collaboration between medical and engineering sites should be established. Moreover, new medical applications should be developed in the way that does not change the traditional approaches that medical doctors (MD) were trained, but provides solutions to improve the diagnosis and treatment quality.

The presented state‐of‐the‐art medical RP is applied for diagnosis and treatment in the following medical areas: cranio‐maxillofacial and dental surgery, neurosurgery, orthopedics, orthosis and tissue engineering. The paper is useful for MD (radiologists and surgeons), biomedical and RP/CAD/CAM engineers.

Earthquake usually causes death, injury, disability and destruction of buildings and infrastructure, and people with disabilities are usually affected more than healthy people. As undesirable experiences may also have positive outcomes, this study aims to investigate the experiences of PWD and identify the positive effects of earthquakes on them in Iran, as an earthquake-prone country.

In this qualitative study, 20 participants were selected purposively among those having physical disability, aged 23-55 years and with experience of an earthquake. Their opinions were collected using semi-structured interviews. Analysis was performed using thematic approach and MAXQDA software was used to organize the data.

The positive effects of earthquake were categorized into five main themes: promotion of preparedness, knowledge enhancement, improvement of structures, socio-economic improvement (economic situation enhancement and social cohesion promotion) and outstanding role of national and international non-governmental organizations.

Although disasters are generally unpleasant, in the long term, they can result in positive effects and may be considered as opportunities to improve the situation and eliminate certain limitations. It is also important to learn from experiences of people with disabilities and apply the lessons learned, for enhancing preparedness and providing better services in the response phase of disaster management. Additionally, paying attention to the positive attitudes of such people, with special conditions and limitations, indicates their enhanced resilience to cope with disasters and emergencies, including COVID-19, which should be taken into consideration by policymakers and planners in future programs.

Wrist orthoses are used by occupational therapists to decrease pain, support weak muscles and protect tissues during healing. However, use of wrist orthoses has been observed to produce compensatory movements in other upper extremity joints. This paper aims to determine whether wearing wrist orthoses produced compensatory movements of the elbow in addition to the shoulder when performing drinking and hammering tasks.

Two twin-axis electrogoniometers were positioned on the elbow and shoulder to track joint movement. The four conditions were drink with orthosis, hammer with orthosis, drink without orthosis and hammer without orthosis. Joint movement was defined as total angular excursion of the joint throughout the performance of the task. Separate 2 × 2 (joint × orthosis) repeated measures analyzes of variance (ANOVA) were used to evaluate differences in joint excursion of the elbow and shoulder joints between orthosis conditions for each task.

Wearing a wrist orthosis did not change the amount of joint excursion compared to not wearing an orthosis during the drinking and hammering tasks.

Findings suggest that wrist orthoses do not result in statistically significant changes in elbow and shoulder joint movements during simulated drinking and hammering tasks.

The purpose of this paper is to propose a seamless active interaction control method integrating electromyography (EMG)-triggered assistance and the adaptive impedance control scheme for parallel robot-assisted lower limb rehabilitation and training.

An active interaction control strategy based on EMG motion recognition and adaptive impedance model is implemented on a six-degrees of freedom parallel robot for lower limb rehabilitation. The autoregressive coefficients of EMG signals integrating with a support vector machine classifier are utilized to predict the movement intention and trigger the robot assistance. An adaptive impedance controller is adopted to influence the robot velocity during the exercise, and in the meantime, the user’s muscle activity level is evaluated online and the robot impedance is adapted in accordance with the recovery conditions.

Experiments on healthy subjects demonstrated that the proposed method was able to drive the robot according to the user’s intention, and the robot impedance can be updated with the muscle conditions. Within the movement sessions, there was a distinct increase in the muscle activity levels for all subjects with the active mode in comparison to the EMG-triggered mode.

Both users’ movement intention and voluntary participation are considered, not only triggering the robot when people attempt to move but also changing the robot movement in accordance with user’s efforts. The impedance model here responds directly to velocity changes, and thus allows the exercise along a physiological trajectory. Moreover, the muscle activity level depends on both the normalized EMG signals and the weight coefficients of involved muscles.

The purpose of this paper is to describe a manufacturing methodology for a wrist orthosis. The case study aims to offer new approaches in the area of human orthoses.

The article describes the utilization of rapid prototyping (RP), passive stereo photogrammetry and software tools for the orthosis design process. This study shows the key points of the design and manufacturing methodology. The approach uses specific technologies, such as 3D digitizing, reverse engineering and polygonal-surface software, FDM RP and 3D printing.

The results show that the used technologies reflect the patient's requirements and also they could be an alternative solution to the standard method of orthosis design.

The methodology provides a good position for further development issues.

The methodology could be usable for clinical practice and allows the manufacturing of the perfect orthosis of the upper limb. The usage of this methodology depends on the RP system and type of material.

The article describes a particular topical problem and it is following previous publications in the field of human orthoses. The paper presents the methodology of wrist orthosis design and manufacturing. The paper presents an alternative approach applicable in clinical practice.

The purpose of this study is to validate a novel model of resting hand splint manufactured by additive manufacturing (AM) and compare it with the traditional model manufactured by high temperature thermoplastic in terms of cost, weight, volume and thermal comfort.

A novel resting hand splint model was created from the topology optimization (TO) and analyzed, by finite-element analysis, manufacturing cost and weight, with a traditional resting hand splint. A pilot clinical study was carried out to verify heat diffusion during the use of the two splints.

The results showed that compared with the traditional model, the novel model reduced the volume of material used by 35.48%, the weight of the orthosis by 17.56% and the maximum surface deformation by 171.17% when subjected to actuation forces. It was also verified that, when manufactured with Nylon by AM, the new model is 1.5 times cheaper than the traditional model made of Polypropylene. The result of the thermographic analysis showed greater temperature variation in the use of the traditional splint (+4.6°C) compared to the temperature variation observed in the nylon splint (2.1°C).

These results have as clinical relevance the demonstration of the feasibility of manufacturing functional orthoses that are more comfortable, cheaper and lighter than traditional ones.

This study describes the use of TO to manufacture a novel resting hand splint, which was compared with the commonly used traditional splint in terms of mechanical resistance, weight, cost and thermal comfort.

The purpose of this paper is the control of lower limb orthosis acting at the knee joint level for a passive rehabilitation purpose.

A control law, based on a saturated proportional derivative controller, is proposed in order to drive the shank-foot-orthosis system along a desired trajectory.

The proposed control law is tested in real time using the orthosis EICOSI of the LISSI-Laboratory. The experiments show that the proposed control law is capable of providing satisfactory trajectory tracking performance given only the knee joint angle measurement. Moreover, the control law is robust with respect to external disturbances.

Robust control of an actuated lower limb orthosis.

This paper aims to develop a signal acquisition system of surface electromyography (sEMG) and use the characteristics of (sEMG) signal to interference action pattern.

This paper proposes a fusion method based on combining the coefficient of AR model and wavelet coefficient. It improves the recognition rate of the target action. To overcome the slow convergence speed and local optimum in standard BP network, the study presents a BP algorithm which combine with LM algorithm and PSO algorithm, and it improves the convergence speed and the recognition rate of the target action.

Experiments verify the effectiveness of the system from two aspects the target motion recognition rate and the corresponding reaction speed of the robotic system.

The study developed a signal acquisition system of sEMG and used the characteristics of (sEMG) signal to interference action pattern. The myoelectricity integral values are presented to determine the starting point and end point of target movement, which is more effective than using single sample point amplitude method.

The purpose of this paper is to propose a method to avoid hyperstaticity and eventually reduce the magnitude of undesired force/torques. The authors also study the influence of hyperstaticity on human motor control during a redundant task.

Increasing the level of transparency of robotic interfaces is critical to haptic investigations and applications. This issue is particularly important to robotic structures that mimic the human counterpart's morphology and attach directly to the limb. Problems arise for complex joints such as the wrist, which cannot be accurately matched with a traditional mechanical joint. In such cases, mechanical differences between human and robotic joint cause hyperstaticity (i.e. over-constrained) which, coupled with kinematic misalignment, leads to uncontrolled force/torque at the joint. This paper focusses on the prono-supination (PS) degree of freedom of the forearm. The overall force and torque in the wrist PS rotation is quantified by means of a wrist robot.

A practical solution to avoid hyperstaticity and reduce the level of undesired force/torque in the wrist is presented. This technique is shown to reduce 75 percent of the force and 68 percent of the torque. It is also shown an over-constrained mechanism could alter human motor strategies.

The presented solution could be taken into account in the early phase of design of robots. It could also be applied to modify the fixation points of commercial robots in order to reduce the magnitude of reaction forces and avoid changes in motor strategy during the robotic therapy.

In this paper for the first time the authors study the effect of hyperstaticity on both reaction forces and human motor strategies.