lunes, 6 de octubre de 2014

Biomechancal analysis of rising to standing from sitting


BIOMECHANICAL ANALYSIS

Sit to stand movement is one of the most important human activities.

1. Sit to stand Analysis
We can divide this movement in three phases. Each phase is differentiated in terms of momentum and stability characteristics.

Phase 1: Inititation or Acceleration phase
In this phase, the center of gravity is accelerated onto the horizontal direction until to acquire its maximum speed, Some scientist also call it, acceleration phase.

Is a flexion-momentum phase used to generate the initial momentum for rising.
Phase 2 or Transition phase.
This phase begins when the center of gravity is in its maximal horizontal speed, and ends when CG reachs its maximal vertical speed.

Begins as the individual leaves the chair seat and ends at maximal ankle dorsiflexion. Forward momentum of the upper body is transferred to forward and upward momentum of the total body.


Phase 3 or Descceleration or Stabilitation phase
It begins when CoG is on its maximal speed and the full body begins to elevate itself, moving vertically its center of gravity until to stabilize its base of sustentation rising its full upright position. As speed is decreasing in this phase, it's also normally called desacceleration phase.






2 Muscles actions at standing

The extensor muscles that support erect posture are called posturals or antigravitatores. Theses muscles have red fibers that are highly resistent to fatigue, Its energy comsumption is low and show a kind of contractions that's called tonic contraction.

3 Antigravitatories muscles at erect posture

· Neck Extensor muscles
· Erector spinae muscles
· Gluteal muscles
· Quadriceps muscles.
· Tríceps sureal muscle (gemellus y soleus).


miércoles, 1 de octubre de 2014

XQ PROJECT

1. INTRODUCTION

One of the newest important research trends in these days about robotics is, without a doubt, Biomechatronics. This line is about robotics applications into the medicine, In fact, there are lots of Universities around the world developing projects in this area.

Well, from my point of view, two mains areas are oriented to, #Exoskeletots and #BCI's.. Currently, people around the world search the best way to build the most efficiently, robust, and economic prototype of exoskeleton, and, on the other hand, the advances onto Brain Computer Interfaces' performance are really amazing... and getting better.

Asia is, I'm pretty sure, the continent with more amazing advances in Exoskeletons, however, Europe and United States are getting really interesting results in BCI's.

In SouthAmérica, Brasil is who is investing more resources in these lines of research, and Colombia and Argentina, the next ones.

In Perú, there is no yet a strongh orientation to this area, however, there are isolated cases as PUCP, UNI, UNT and UdeP, who have begun some year before to develop interesting projects presented in national Congress and some Internationals.

Well, the aim of this project was born under the necessity of people who have pathologies of muscle weakness in their lower limbs, so, it's due as for neurological problems as for rehabilitation process after a traumatism or post operatory

This design search to cooperate with the lower limb movement rehabilitation process of the user/patient

Electromyography analysis and signal processing are essential parts of this project, so, we will be able to identify the movement that the patient/user wants to do.

Kinematics and dynamics analysis are been made powered by SimMechanics from Matlab and Solid Works

The controller is a PID with gravity compensation, It's a old algorithm, but is always efficient.

Furthermore, the Exoskeleton is able to use in some industrial aplications as packaging, building industry, mechanic maintenance, etc. Definitely, there is a world of applications related to human gait improvements.

 

martes, 29 de abril de 2014

About Drones ...



Well, currently, Drones are one of the most interesting and increasing research lines, many researchers and amateur UAV developpers are involved in its study.We can find lots of amateur pages, doctoral and master thesis , scientific publictions and even, so interesting toolkits and simulators.

Here we have some interesting links, and, in a little time, some slides about its modelling and control.

PUBLICATIONS
https://drive.google.com/folderview?id=0B--LHIqIe32EbFZkUm9WUkd0eG8&usp=sharing

SOFTWARE

ArDrone Toolkit Matlab
http://www.mathworks.com/matlabcentral/fileexchange/43719-ar-drone-simulink-development-kit-v1

The development kit consists of blocks and examples for the simulation and real-time Wi-Fi control of the Parrot AR Drone 2.0.

The simulation blocks are based on models of the vehicle derived via system identification. The Wi-Fi control blocks are capable of sending commands to the drone and reading the states of the drone in real-time.

The examples provide a framework for the control and guidance of the vehicle. These examples enable velocity and position control, waypoint tracking, and mission execution for the AR.Drone in both simulation and Wi-Fi control.

This development kit was produced in the context of the 2013 MathWorks Summer Research Internship project. For more information about the overall project to develop an automated autonomous emergency response system see:

Required Products Aerospace Blockset

http://ardrone2.parrot.com/support/

Gazebo Quadrotor Simulator
http://sourceforge.net/projects/gazebo-quad-sim/

Machine Vision & Robotics Toolbox (MATLAB)
http://www.petercorke.com/Toolbox_software.html

BOOKS
Robotics, Vision and Control
http://www.petercorke.com/Book.html

Computer Vision: Algorithms and Applications
http://szeliski.org/Book/

DEVELOPPERS

Howard Li
(PEng, PhD, IEEE Senior Member) is an associate professor in the Department of Electrical and Computer Engineering, University of New Brunswick, Fredericton, New Brunswick, Canada
"His research interests are intelligent vehicles, unmanned aerial vehicles, unmanned ground vehicles, autonomous underwater vehicles, motion planning, Simultaneous Localization And Mapping (SLAM), mechatronics, control systems,robotics, multi-agent systems, and artificial intelligence."

http://www.ee.unb.ca/howard/research/index.htm

Paul E. I. Pounds
School of Info. Tech. and Electrical Engineering
University of Queensland
Lecturer of Mechatronics (assist. prof. eqv.)

"My research focuses on unmanned aerial vehicles. In the past I've worked on flight mechanics, stability and control, propulsion, avionics and embedded software for UAVs, and rotorcraft in particular. More recently, I have worked on the problem of UAVs interacting with objects while in flight, including grasping and recovering unstructured objects by a small robot helicopter."

See more details on my research here and a full list of publications here.

Nick Dijkshoorn
Master Artificial Intelligence, University of Amsterdam
"Hi there, i'm a master student at the University of Amsterdam. I'm following the Artificial Intelligence (AI) programme. Beside my studies, i have a web development company called Deepvisiontogether with three friends. We started this company in 2003, at age 16."

Private:mail@nickd.nl
Work:n.dijkshoorn@deepvision.nl
Skype:nickemanz

http://www.nickd.nl/dl/

Tomas Krajnik
cyberneticist, roboteer
Lincoln centre for autonomous systems,
Faculty of Science,
University of Lincoln,
Brayford pool, Lincoln
LN6 7TS, Lincolnshire
United Kingdom

"Working in the mobile robotics domain since 2004 with a particular focus on outdoor robot navigation, environment modeling, reasoning and planning. Has designed, implemented, theoretically and experimentally veri ed a monocular based mobile robot navigation method, which allows an autonomous vehicle to traverse long paths in unstructured environments."

ARDrone quadcopter in robotics research
http://labe.felk.cvut.cz/~tkrajnik/ardrone/

Jana Kosecka
Associate Professor
Department of Computer Science
George Mason University

Her general research interests are in Computer Vision, Machine Learning and Robotics. In particular she is interested 'seeing' systems engaged in autonomous tasks, acquisition of static and dynamic models of environments by means of visual sensing and human-computer interaction.
http://cs.gmu.edu/~kosecka/


Prof. Daniel Cremers, 
Computer Vision Group, 
Technical University of Munich:

Prof. Vijay Kumar, 
GRASP Laboratory, 
University of Pennsylvania: 

Prof. Raffaelo D'Andrea,
 Flying Machine Arena, 
ETH Zurich: 

Prof. Roland Siegwart, 
Autonomous Systems Lab, 
ETH Zurich: 
website publications videos

Both Prof. Vijay Kumar and Prof. Raffaelo D'Andrea
They gave entertaining TED talks on the topic including impressive live demos:
TED Talk: Robots that fly.. and cooperate (by Prof. Vijay Kumar)
TED Talk: The astounding athletic power of quadcopters (by Prof. Raffaelo D'Andrea)

OCW COURSES
Visual Navigation for Flying Robots