Design and Evaluation of a new mechatronic platform for assessment and prevention of fall risks

Bassi, Genovese Vincenzo, Monaco Vito, Odetti Luca, Cattin Emanuele, Micera, Micera Silvestro

Description

Studying the responses in human behaviour to external perturbations during daily motor tasks is of key importance for understanding mechanisms of balance control and for investigating the functional response of targeted subjects. Experimental platforms as far developed entail a low number of perturbations and, only in few cases, have been designed to measure variables used at run time to trigger events during a certain motor task. Methods This work introduces a new mechatronic device, named SENLY, that provides balance perturbations while subjects carry out daily motor tasks (e.g., walking, upright stance). SENLY mainly consists of two independently-controlled treadmills that destabilize balance by suddenly perturbing belts movements in the horizontal plane. It is also provided with force sensors, which can be used at run time to estimate the ground reaction forces and identify events along the gait cycle in order to trigger the platform perturbation. The paper also describes the customized procedures adopted to calibrate the platform and the first testing trials aimed at evaluating its performance. Results SENLY allows to measure both vertical ground reaction forces and their related location more precisely and more accurately than other platforms of the same size. Moreover, the platform kinematic and kinetic performance meets all required specifications, with a negligible influence of the instrumental noise. Conclusion A new perturbing platform able to reproduce different slipping paradigms while measuring GRFs at run time in order to enable the asynchronous triggering during the gait cycle was designed and developed. Calibration procedures and pilot tests show that SENLY allows to suitably estimate dynamical features of the load and to standardize experimental sessions, improving the efficacy of functional analysis.

Sujets

• Mechatronics
• Falling
• Calibration

Informations

• Publié par: biomed
• Publié le: 01 janvier 2012
• Nombre de lectures: 6
• Langue: English
• Poids de l'ouvrage: 1 Mo

Extrait

B ht a t s p s : i // L w uc w ia w n . i jn e e t u a r l o . e J n ou g r r n e a h l a o b. f c N o e m u / r c o o E n n t g e in nt e / e 9 ri / n 1/ g 5 a 1 nd Rehabilitation 2012, 9 :51 J N E R JOURNAL OF NEUROENGINEERING AND REHABILITATION

R E S E A R C H Open Access Design and Evaluation of a new mechatronic platform for assessment and prevention of fall risks Lorenzo Bassi Luciani 1 , Vincenzo Genovese 1 , Vito Monaco 1 , Luca Odetti 2 , Emanuele Cattin 1 and Silvestro Micera 1,3*

Abstract Background: Studying the responses in human behaviour to external perturbations during daily motor tasks is of key importance for understanding mechanisms of balance control and for investigating the functional response of targeted subjects. Experimental platforms as far developed entail a low number of perturbations and, only in few cases, have been designed to measure variables used at run time to trigger events during a certain motor task. Methods: This work introduces a new mechatronic device, named SENLY, that provides balance perturbations while subjects carry out daily motor tasks (e.g., walking, upright stance). SENLY mainly consists of two independently-controlled treadmills that destabilize balance by suddenly perturbing belts movements in the horizontal plane. It is also provided with force sensors, which can be used at run time to estimate the ground reaction forces and identify events along the gait cycle in order to trigger the platform perturbation. The paper also describes the customized procedures adopted to calibrate the platform and the first testing trials aimed at evaluating its performance. Results: SENLY allows to measure both vertical ground reaction forces and their related location more precisely and more accurately than other platforms of the same size. Moreover, the platform kinematic and kinetic performance meets all required specifications, with a negligible influence of the instrumental noise. Conclusion: A new perturbing platform able to reproduce different slipping paradigms while measuring GRFs at run time in order to enable the asynchronous triggering during the gait cycle was designed and developed. Calibration procedures and pilot tests show that SENLY allows to suitably estimate dynamical features of the load and to standardize experimental sessions, improving the efficacy of functional analysis. Keywords: Mechatronics, Locomotion perturbation, Falling, Calibration, Balance control, Event triggering

Background goal of these treatments is to significantly reduce fall Fall prevention is currently a very important, social, and accidents and related effects in order to improve the in- economical problem due to the aging of the population dependence of individuals, and reduce social costs due worldwide. Given the strong relationship between health to hospitalization [1,2]. and fall risk, a large number of exercise programs, aimed A wide range of devices that simulate different kinds at enhancing strength, endurance and body mechanics of falls have been developed to investigate human behav- of targeted subjects, have been proposed to avoid the ior during the perturbation of balance control. These traumatic consequences of such occurrence. The final devices can be classified into three main groups: i. plat- forms aimed at perturbing the quiet upright stance by cera@sssu t means of tilts, translations and rotations of the support 1 * T C h o e rr B e i s o p R o o n b d ot e i n cs ce I : ns m ti i tute,Scuol p a .i SuperioreSant ’ Anna, P.za Martiri della base; ii. treadmills that destabilize subjects while walk- 3 L T i r b a e n rt s à l , at 3 io 3 n – al 5 N 6 e 1 u 2 r 7 a , l Pi E s n a g , i I n ta e l e y ringLabatory,CenterforNeuroprosthetics ing; iii. complex systems generating unexpected pertur- or bations due to slipping surfaces or sud and Institute of Bioengineering, School of Engineering, Swiss Federal denly appearing Institute of Technology Lausanne (EPFL), Lausanne, Switzerland Full list of author information is available at the end of the article © 2012 Bassi Luciani et al.; licensee BioMed Central Ltd. This is an Open Access article distributed under the terms of the Creative Commons Attribution License (http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by/2.0), which permits unrestricted use, distribution, and reproduction in any medium, provided the original work is properly cited.