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A method for paraplegic upper-body posture estimation during standing: a pilot study for rehabilitation purposes

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Abstract

This paper presents a contribution for restoring standing in paraplegia while using functional electrical stimulation (FES). Movement generation induced by FES remains mostly open looped and stimulus intensities are tuned empirically. To design an efficient closed-loop control, a preliminary study has been carried out to investigate the relationship between body posture and voluntary upper body movements. A methodology is proposed to estimate body posture in the sagittal plane using force measurements exerted on supporting handles during standing. This is done by setting up constraints related to the geometric equations of a two-dimensional closed chain model and the hand–handle interactions. All measured quantities are subject to an uncertainty assumed unknown but bounded. The set membership estimation problem is solved via interval analysis. Guaranteed uncertainty bounds are computed for the estimated postures. In order to test the feasibility of our methodology, experiments were carried out with complete spinal cord injured patients.

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Notes

  1. http://www.ti3.tu-harburg.de/.

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Acknowledgments

The authors would like to specially thank all the participants for giving so much time and making this study possible. We gratefully acknowledge Propara rehabilitation center for giving us the opportunity to work in the best conditions during the experiments. Also thanks to industrial partner MXM (Vallauris, France) for technical and financial support as well as ANR-RNTS, MIMES project. We also would like to acknowledge the contributions made to this study by our partners from the EDM (Efficience et Déficience Motrice) laboratory, Université de Montpellier I (Montpellier, France), and fundings from COLOR INRIA, Posture project.

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Authors and Affiliations

  1. DEMAR team, INRIA-LIRMM, 161 rue Ada, Montpellier, France

    Gaël Pages, Nacim Ramdani, Philippe Fraisse & David Guiraud

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  1. Gaël Pages
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  2. Nacim Ramdani
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  3. Philippe Fraisse
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  4. David Guiraud
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Correspondence to David Guiraud.

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Pages, G., Ramdani, N., Fraisse, P. et al. A method for paraplegic upper-body posture estimation during standing: a pilot study for rehabilitation purposes. Med Biol Eng Comput 47, 625–633 (2009). https://doi.org/10.1007/s11517-009-0470-z

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  • DOI: https://doi.org/10.1007/s11517-009-0470-z

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