Development of a closed-loop fes system using a 3-d magnetic position and orientation measurement system

Abstract

We have developed a closed-loop FES system using a magnetic 3-D position and orientation measurement system (FASTRAK, Polhemus Inc). The purpose of this development was to resolve some experimental difficulties involved in our previous goniometer-based experimental system. The new system enabled us to perform FES control experiments on the multi-joint musculoskeletal system of the upper limbs including forearm pronation/supination. In this paper, we evaluated the system by some single-joint tracking tasks in order to compare its control performance with that of the previous system. Four muscles (ECRL(B), ECU, FCR, and FCU) of neurologically intact subjects were stimulated to control the wrist joint's two degrees of freedom movement. Stimulation currents were determined by a multi-channel PID controller that was designed for a musculoskeletal system with redundancy (i.e. the number of muscles stimulated is more than that of the degree-of-freedom of the movement). The results showed that the system had sufficient control performance on tracking desired trajectories. Moreover, the system could compensate for unwanted external disturbances.