Yi Andong, Zahedi Ahmad, Wang Yansong, Tan U-Xuan, Zhang Dingguo
IEEE Int Conf Rehabil Robot. 2019 Jun;2019:1115-1120. doi: 10.1109/ICORR.2019.8779363.
Pathological tremor is caused by a variety of neurological diseases. Although it is not life-threatening, it brings great inconvenience to patients. Traditional treatments including medication, rehabilitation programs and deep brain stimulation (DBS) have shown limited effectiveness along with risks and side effects. In order to overcome the limitations of these treatments, a new method, wearable exoskeleton technology, is introduced that aims to provide a new solution for tremor management. Based on this method, a wrist tremor suppression exoskeleton (WTSE) is developed in this research. A magnetorheological (MR) fluid damper is designed for controllable damping force and an embedded acquisition platform is used to acquire real-time tremor information. The total weight of the WTSE is 262.13 g and the maximum sustained damping force reaches 8 N. The prototype is wearable and the damping force is real-time adjustable. According to preliminary results, the signal acquisition system can obtain reliable data and the WTSE can reduce the amplitude of acceleration and angular velocity of simulated tremor by 60.39% and 55.07%, respectively.
病理性震颤由多种神经系统疾病引起。虽然它不会危及生命，但给患者带来极大不便。包括药物治疗、康复计划和深部脑刺激（DBS）在内的传统治疗方法已显示出有限的疗效，同时还存在风险和副作用。为了克服这些治疗方法的局限性，引入了一种新方法——可穿戴外骨骼技术，旨在为震颤管理提供新的解决方案。基于此方法，本研究开发了一种腕部震颤抑制外骨骼（WTSE）。设计了一种磁流变（MR）流体阻尼器以实现可控阻尼力，并使用嵌入式采集平台获取实时震颤信息。WTSE的总重量为262.13克，最大持续阻尼力达到8牛。该原型可穿戴，阻尼力可实时调节。根据初步结果，信号采集系统能够获得可靠数据，WTSE可分别将模拟震颤的加速度和角速度幅度降低60.39%和55.07%。
