DESIGN AND DEVELOPMENT OF 3D PRINTED MYOELECTRIC ROBOTIC EXOSKELETON FOR HAND REHABILITATION

The development of dynamic rehabilitation devices can be evaluated as a research fast-growing field. Indeed, robot-assisted therapy is an advanced new technology mainly in stroke rehabilitation. Although patients benefit from this enormous development of technology, including the presence of rehabilitation robots, the therapeutic field still suffering a lack in hand robotic rehabilitation devices. In this context, this work proposes a new design of a 3D printed hand exoskeleton for the stroke rehabilitation. Based on the EMG signals measured from the muscles responsible for the hand motion, the designed mechatronic system detects the intention of hand opening or hand closing from the stroked subject. Based on an embedded controller and five servomotors, the low cost robotic system is able to drive in real time three degrees of freedom (DOFs) for each finger. The real tests with stroked subjects showed that the designed hand exoskeleton architecture has a positive effect on the motion finger range and mainly in the hand ability to perform some simple tasks. The case studies showed a good recovery of the motor functions and consequently the developed system efficiency

Nonlinear Control and Synchronization with Time Delays of Multiagent Robotic Systems

We investigate the cooperative control and global asymptotic synchronization Lagrangian system groups, such as industrial robots. The proposed control approach works to accomplish multirobot systems synchronization under an undirected connected communication topology. The control strategy is to synchronize each robot in position and velocity to others robots in the network with respect to the common desired trajectory. The cooperative robot network only requires local neighbor-to-neighbor information exchange between manipulators and does not assume the existence of an explicit leader in the team. It is assumed that network robots have the same number of joints and equivalent joint work spaces. A combination of the lyapunov-based technique and the cross-coupling method has been used to establish the multirobot system asymptotic stability. The developed control combines trajectory tracking and coordination algorithms. To address the time-delay problem in the cooperative network communication, the suggested synchronization control law is shown to synchronize multiple robots as well as to track given trajectory, taking into account the presence of the time delay. To this end, Krasovskii functional method has been used to deal with the delay-dependent stability problem

A Fuzzy Logic Architecture for Rehabilitation Robotic Systems

Robots are highly incorporated in rehabilitation in the last decade to compensate lost functions in disabled individuals. By controlling the rehabilitation robots from far, many benefits are achieved. These benefits include but not restricted to minimum hospital stays, decreasing cost, and increasing the level of care. The main goal of this work is to have an effective solution to take care of patients from far. Tackling the problem of the remote control of rehabilitation robots is undergoing and highly challenging. In this paper, a remote wrist rehabilitation system is presented. The developed system is a sophisticated robot ensuring the two wrist movements (Flexion /extension and abduction/adduction). Additionally, the proposed system provides a software interface enabling the physiotherapists to control the rehabilitation process remotely. The patient’s safety during the therapy is achieved through the integration of a fuzzy controller in the system control architecture. The fuzzy controller is employed to control the robot action according to the pain felt by the patient. By using fuzzy logic approach, the system can adapt effectively according to the patients’ conditions. The Queue Telemetry Transport Protocol (MQTT) is considered to overcome the latency during the human robot interaction. Based on a Kinect camera, the control technique is made gestural. The physiotherapist gestures are detected and transmitted to the software interface to be processed and be sent to the robot. The acquired measurements are recorded in a database that can be used later to monitor patient progress during the treatment protocol. The obtained experimental results show the effectiveness of the developed remote rehabilitation system

Design and Development of an Upper Limb Rehabilitative Robot with Dual Functionality

The design of an upper limb rehabilitation robot for post-stroke patients is considered a benchmark problem regarding improving functionality and ensuring better human–robot interaction (HRI). Existing upper limb robots perform either joint-based exercises (exoskeleton-type functionality) or end-point exercises (end-effector-type functionality). Patients may need both kinds of exercises, depending on the type, level, and degree of impairments. This work focused on designing and developing a seven-degrees-of-freedom (DoFs) upper-limb rehabilitation exoskeleton called ‘u-Rob’ that functions as both exoskeleton and end-effector types device. Furthermore, HRI can be improved by monitoring the interaction forces between the robot and the wearer. Existing upper limb robots lack the ability to monitor interaction forces during passive rehabilitation exercises; measuring upper arm forces is also absent in the existing devices. This research work aimed to develop an innovative sensorized upper arm cuff to measure the wearer’s interaction forces in the upper arm. A PID control technique was implemented for both joint-based and end-point exercises. The experimental results validated both types of functionality of the developed robot

Stability results for neutral fractional stochastic differential equations

Many techniques have been recently employed by researchers to address the challenges posed by fractional differential equations. In this paper, we investigate the concept of Ulam-Hyers stability for a class of neutral fractional stochastic differential equations by using the Banach fixed point theorem and the stochastic analysis techniques. An example is presented at the end of the paper to show the interest and the applicability of the results

Fuzzy logic-based vehicle safety estimation using V2V communications and on-board embedded ROS-based architecture for safe traffic management system in hail city

Estimating the state of surrounding vehicles is crucial to either prevent or avoid collisions with other road users. However, due to insufficient historical data and the unpredictability of future driving tactics, estimating the safety status is a difficult undertaking. To address this problem, an intelligent and autonomous traffic management system based on V2V technology is proposed. The main contribution of this work is to design a new system that uses a real-time control system and a fuzzy logic algorithm to estimate safety. The robot operating system (ROS) is the foundation of the control architechture, which connects all the various system nodes and generates the decision in the form of a speech and graphical message. The safe path is determined by a safety evaluation system that combines sensor data with a fuzzy classifier. Moreover, the suitable information processed by each vehicle unit is shared in the group to avoid unexpected problems related to speed, sudden braking, unplanned deviation, street holes, road bumps, and any kind of street issues. The connection is provided through a network based on the ZigBee protocol. The results of vehicle tests show that the proposed method provides a more reliable estimate of safety as compared to other methods

Distributed control and synchronization of cooperative robot manipulators

Cette thèse développe les lois de coordination de systèmes de Lagrange. Elle propose en premier lieu une stratégie complètement décentralisée qui se base sur la technique de cross-coupling pour la commande d'un groupe de robots, appelé réseau, qui synchronisent leurs mouvements en suivant une trajectoire désirée. Cette stratégie est étendue pour faire face à l'incertitude paramétrique des robots ainsi qu’aux retards fréquemment rencontrés dans les applications pratiques de réseaux de communication. Une deuxième architecture basée sur la théorie des graphes est proposée pour les réseaux à leader. L'approche développée est considérée hybride. Une extension adaptative à base de réseaux de neurones est développée pour traiter les cas d'incertitude paramétrique. La stratégie conçue prend en considération les délais dans la réception des données. En se basant sur la notion de système en chaîne, la théorie des graphes, le concept de la passivité et la technique du backstepping, une nouvelle méthodologie de la conception de contrôleur de synchronisation pour une classe de systèmes sous-actionnés est développée. Afin d’avoir la possibilité d’implémenter ces stratégies de contrôle, on a développé une plate-forme d'expérimentation pour la robotique industrielle coopérative.This thesis investigates the issue of designing decentralized control laws to cooperatively control a team of robot manipulators. The purpose is to synchronize their movements while tracking common desired trajectory. Based on a combination of Lyapunov direct method and cross-coupling technique, To account for unmatched uncertainties, the proposed decentralized control laws are extended to an adaptive synchronization tracking controllers. Moreover, due to communication imperfection, time delay communication problems are considered in the performance analysis of the controllers. Another relevant problem for distributed synchronized systems is the leader-follower control problem. In this strategy, a decentralized control laws based on the backstepping scheme is proposed to deal with a leader-follower multiple robots structure. Based on graph theory, the coordination strategy combines the leader follower control with the decentralized control. The thesis, also considers the cooperative movement of under- actuated manipulators tracking reference trajectories defined by the user. The control problem for a network of class of under-actuated systems is considered. The approach we adopted in this thesis consists in decomposing the under-actuated manipulators into a cascade of passive subsystems that synchronize with he other neighbors subsystems. The resulting synchronized control law is basically a combination of non-regular backstepping procedure aided with some concepts from graph theory. The proposed controllers are validated numerically, assuming that the underlying communication graph is strongly connected. To implement these control strategies, we developed an experimental platform made of three robot manipulators

Smart real time wearable navigation support system for BVIP

In this paper, we develop a smart navigation aid system for blind and visually impaired people (BVIP). The proposed design revolves around a decision support system based on fuzzy logic, a Raspberry Pi4 board for real-time processing, a set of high-performance sensors, and a haptic voice interface to guide the user. The control architecture is based on the Robot Operating System (ROS) which takes care of connecting all the different nodes of the system and generates the decision in the form of a voice haptic message. A security assessment system is implemented using sensor data fusion and a fuzzy classifier to determine the human security path. Experimental tests carried out by BVIP in different environments have shown the effectiveness of the developed solution