Listen to me !

The project is part of a physiotherapy rehabilitation project using an exoskeleton for patients with walking difficulties (figure1.1(b)). The machine support patients during their physiotherapy sessions thanks to motors helping them to move. At his final state, we want the exoskeleton to be secure enough so that the physiotherapist could leave the patient alone or even autonomous with his exercises. To do so the goal of this project is to imagine a safe system to stop the exoskeleton at any time. Currently, an emergency button is placed in the back of the device. However, the patient needs someone else to push it in that case. If our goal is to leave the patient alone without any trouble, the button has to be more accessible. Moreover, because of crutches, the patient is not able to use his arms during the exercises. The designed system has to be touchless, so the patient can send commands while doing the exercises. Moreover, a more accessible button is currently under development. Our goal is to improve the reliability of the system by providing a second way to shut down the exoskeleton. The first system imagined uses voice detection, especially the word ”STOP”, to stop the machine during exercising (figure 1.1(a)). The project consists of developing a mobile application to interact with the exoskeleton. The received command (e.g. by voice) is sent to a Raspberry Pi which turns off the machine then. In this solution, we imagine the smartphone attached to the neck of the patient. Moreover, the application is developed for iOS devices only, making maintenance easier. Finally, because the developed solution targets security and robustness over optimisation and a session only last around 30 minutes, battery usage is not a priority.

General information
  • Date: 04.06.2021
  • Type: Semester project
  • Responsible: Karl Daher

People

Students
  • Laurent Chassot
Supervisors
Elena Mugellini
Head of HumanTech
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Karl Daher
Senior Researcher
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Laurent Rime
Extern