Robust Cadence and Power Tracking on a Switched FES Cycle With an Unknown Electromechanical Delay

Abstract

Functional electrical stimulation (FES) is commonly used to facilitate cycling tasks for people with lower-limb movement disorders. In this work, FES and motor controllers are designed to track a desired power and cadence, respectively, and a Lyapunov-based switched systems analysis is performed to guarantee uniformly ultimately bounded power tracking and global exponential cadence tracking for a switched, delayed, nonlinear, and uncertain FES-cycling system. A unique challenge in this problem is that there is an unknown time-varying input delay to produce force, and a different unknown time-varying residual input delay where force is still produced after stimulation is removed. These delays impact the dwell-time conditions that dictate stimulation timing, and if not properly accounted for can lead to undesired effects such as antagonistic muscles exerting force at the same time or potential instabilities. The proposed controllers were validated by experimental analysis of four participants with neurological conditions (NCs) and five able-bodied participants, and yielded average power and cadence tracking errors of 0.01 ± 0.09 W and −0.05 ± 0.65 revolutions per minute (RPM), respectively, for the able-bodied participants and 0.01 ± 1.11 W and −0.07 ± 1.17 RPM, respectively, for the participants with NCs.