20
Aug, 2019

CADENCE: our students in Madrid!

A new collaboration with the Cajal Institute in Madrid has just begun: this time our students Pietro and Marco will be involved in a project called CADENCE.

CADENCE is a project that will evaluate the H2 exoskeleton of Toledo hospital using the instrumented crutches developed in our laboratory. They will help users to maintain balance and at the same time provide values of force directly related to ground reactions.

The project will involve healthy users, who will be guided by audio feedback, allowing them to step on when they reach a specific force threshold on the crutches. In this way, we hope to reproduce the movements of a paraplegic exoskeleton user.
The target metrics chosen are the forces at the ground (provided thanks to the instrumented crutches), the kinematics of the user and the spatio-temporal parameters of gait, acquired using a Vicon system and reflective markers on the exoskeleton and its pilot.

The experiment will be performed with the assistance of Technaid (Arganda del Rey), and CSIS (Madrid), where our students will spend the summer.

7
Nov, 2018

Test day: Motion Capture – TRAP-Lab

Despite the uncertain weather conditions, the TRAP-Lab and BRaIN teams had an intense day of testing. The new motion capture system, installed experimentally at the TRAP CONCAVERDE field in Lonato del Garda, allows to measure the kinematics and dynamics of the athlete, both before and during the shooting action. The exploratory test will allow to evaluate the system’s reliability and the measurements’ accuracy.

11
Sep, 2018
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First hand experience

In the first year of master at “rehabilitation” course in human science motion of Groningen University students are invited to experience directly the tools that are going to be key of their studies, in a funny and at the same time pragmatic way, to understand the difficulties that occur to people who use these tools daily, also in sports.

Our students Paolo and Ridi, working there, had the pleasure to participate and understand this context in a conscientious and recreative way.

First hand experience on what you are working on is important: every time you design a measurement system it’s best to understand deeply the subject beforehand.

5
Sep, 2018

Wheelchair ergometer @ Groningen

We are working side by side with Groningen University to validate a new ergometer for persons and athletes in wheelchairs.

The device was developed by Groningen University and Lode: Servo engines, together with a load cell run on a feedback loop with a biomechanical model to reproduce overground behaviour.

MMTLab is involved with two of our master students, Paolo and Ridi, to design the calibration setup to validate the ergometer and understand its measurement accuracy in different conditions.

http://www.rug.nl/news-and-events/news/archief2016/nieuwsberichten/0518-unifocusvegter

3
Sep, 2018
Marcello is testing the crutches feedback system with David from CAJAL Institute in Madrid

Collaboration with CSIC started this summer

During the summer our staff, including our Bachelor Student Marcello, went to Madrid, to work at a joint project on exoskeleton evaluation with the Cajal Institute. Here you can find some photos of our preliminary tests: more info on the project will be posted in the next days.