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Design and Implementation of an Assistive Controller to Maintain Patient Equilibrium, for a Balance Training Device

Baselizadeh, Adel | 2017

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  1. Type of Document: M.Sc. Thesis
  2. Language: Farsi
  3. Document No: 49438 (08)
  4. University: Sharif University of Technology
  5. Department: Mechanical Engineering
  6. Advisor(s): Behzadipour, Saeed
  7. Abstract:
  8. Each year, from %30 to %60 of the elderlies fall down. %10 to %20 of these incidents result in severe injuries. Aging along with stroke can possibly damage body balance system temporarily or permanently. Therefore, human body balance system improvement and treatment seems necessary. Physical therapy methods relying on assistance require not only physiotherapist presence, but also considerable amount of money and time for both patient and physician. Thus, novel rehabilitation methods that do not require physiotherapist presence can help patients greatly. To do so, an apparatus has been designed and fabricated at Sharif University of technology. This apparatus can produce the active rotational perturbation in both Medial/Lateral and Anterior/Posterior directions at the same time. Also a force plate will be used to determine the center of pressure of the patient real-time, which will be displayed as a visual feedback to him/her. Using mentioned abilities of this apparatus — unique capabilities in physical therapy — a wide range of different rehabilitation exercises could be applied for patient’s treatment based on his/her condition. However, the fall risk of patient during treatment process, is an important problem in using this apparatus. This study is intended to design and implement an assistive controller to help patients maintain their balance while using Sharif rehabilitation apparatus. the controller will send appropriate commands to motors, in order to rotate the force plate, which the patient is standing on. By This action, the falling of the patient will bee prevented. for this aim, after preparing the electrical and mechanical hardware of the apparatus, in the first step, an ON/OFF controller and in the second step, a Proportional controller are used as the assistive controllers. To evaluate the performance of the controllers, a test is performed by healthy people. In this test, the effect of using each controller, has been investigated by studing some stability indexes of human balance behaviour. The obtained results indicate The ability of the both controllers to improve stability indexes in medial/lateral direction. The propotional controller has been caused %80 improvement in some indexes in this direction. However, the results show no improvement in stability indexes in anterior/posterior direction
  9. Keywords:
  10. Proportional-Integral (PI)Controller ; Rehabilitation ; Balance Rehabilitation ; Patient Equilibrium ; Assistive Controller ; On/Off Controller

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