Testing the Limit Range of Motion Safety Function of Upper Limb Rehabilitation Robots with an Anthropometrically Adjustable and Sensorized Dummy Limb.

Arm type or exoskeleton type rehabilitation robots move the patient's upper limb through one or more, either free or restrained connection points. The rehabilitation robot is unsafe if it moves the patient's upper limb beyond the limits of the anatomical joint ranges. A validation toolkit was developed to assess the risks of "limit anatomical joint range of movement" and "limit anatomical joint overreaching" during the regular operation of a rehabilitation robot. The validation toolkit includes an anthropometrically adjustable and sensorised dummy limb attached to the RACA (rehabilitation, assessment, compensation, or alleviation) rehabilitation robot; and a software tool for off-line risk assessment and reporting.

Towards a situation-and-user-aware multi-modal motorized toilet system to assist older adults with disabilities: A user requirements study.

In the recent decades state of the art technologies appeared in many areas to assist older adults with disabilities. However, one very essential activity of daily life, the toileting remained without any relevant development. The iToilet project of the European Union focuses on the development of an intelligent and motorized toilet system to enable independent toilet use for older adults with disabilities. To begin the development, the user requirements of end-users were assessed by means of focus group interviews and questionnaires. The survey was conducted in Austria and Hungary with the participation of 74 persons in total (41 subjects with movement disorders, 21 caregivers and 12 healthcare managers). From the interviews, the ranking of functions and features based on the number of their mentions was derived. The raw ranking was modulated by the average ratings from the questionnaires that resulted in the final list of priorities. Our results suggest that a safe and intelligent motorized toilet system should have foldable handrails on both sides (especially for wheelchair users), motorized height and tilt adjusting mechanism for the toilet bowl, fixed toilet paper holder on both sides and emergency recognition with call function. Simple operation, storage and retrieval of user specific settings including bowl height, and user identification were also deemed as very important features, while the possibility to control functions with gestures was valued rather low.

The combined effect of cycling cadence and crank resistance on hamstrings and quadriceps muscle activities during cycling.

The effect of cycling cadence and crank resistance on the activity of hamstrings and quadriceps muscles was investigated during cycling movements of able-bodied subjects on a stationary bike with slow and fast speed against different resistance conditions. The ratio of average EMG amplitudes obtained in the two speed conditions (fast/slow) was computed in each resistance condition. This ratio is higher for both muscles if cycling against higher resistance. This shows that in higher resistance condition muscle activities are not only increased but the change of muscle activities with respect to cadence change varied according to resistance condition. Average EMG amplitudes increased at a higher rate with respect to change of cadence when cycling was performed in higher resistance condition. Besides, when cycling faster, hamstrings activity increased generally at a higher rate than that of quadriceps. The correlation between cadence and EMG amplitudes were also investigated. Considering hamstrings, this correlation was low and decreased as resistance increased. The correlation between the time required to drive one cycle and EMG amplitude is negative but in absolute value it is larger than the correlation of cadence and EMG amplitude.