Abstract
Orthotic management has been proposed as an interesting alternative to current tremor management methods. It is expected that an improvement on manipulative function can be obtained by reducing the tremorous motion associated with some neurological disorders. For this to be possible, a sound modelling of the tremor and the biomechanical characteristics of the upper limb is required. This paper proposes a model for both the tremor motion and the biomechanical parameters of the upper limb. Based on these models and on a prototype of a robotics-based active orthosis two tremor reduction strategies are proposed.
Highlights
Tremor is a rhythmic, involuntary muscular contraction characterized by oscillations of a part of the body (Anouti and Koller 1998)
Rehabilitation programmes and deep brain stimulation, biomechanical loading has appeared as a potential tremor suppression alternative
The goal is filtering out tremor-related frequencies in the tracking signal obtained from input devices when used by patients affected by pathological tremor, generating an intermediate signal, which is sent to the controlled subsystem
Summary
Involuntary muscular contraction characterized by oscillations (to-and-from movements) of a part of the body (Anouti and Koller 1998). The issue of physically isolating the task from the tremorous limb has been attempted in the context of tremor in patients with ataxia. The two approaches available for this application are either filtering the command signal during teleoperation or active oscillation control Activities such as driving a wheelchair, manipulating a rehabilitation robot or accessing a computer require a standard input device (mouse, joystick). In this case, the goal is filtering out tremor-related frequencies in the tracking signal obtained from input devices when used by patients affected by pathological tremor, generating an intermediate signal, which is sent to the controlled subsystem (wheelchair, robot arm or cursor).
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