Non-Invasive Brain Machine Interface Lab

Pediatric Exoskleton

Pediatric Exoskeleton: Welcome

Overview

This was a research project from the Non-Invasive Brian Machine Interface Lab at the University of Houston under Dr. Jose Luis Contreras Vidal. The main goal of the project was to make an exoskeleton system to aid children with muscular diseases which prevent them from able bodied movement.

Pediatric Exoskeleton: About

Design

The design involved mechanical, electrical, software, and biomedical aspects. The prototype was CADed and 3D printed using carbon fiber infused plastics. The exoskeleton design consisted of 3 joints on each leg, with high powered motors for control on each axis. Many sensors were in development during my time working, I focused on designing the insole sensors with a haptic feedback mechanism which would allow the wearer to fell heel-strike and toe-off movements. My main task was to created a software solution to gather the data coming from the sensors and route them to a central processing unit. The project used a Beaglebone Black SOC for its main computing system and Teensy 3.1 microcontrollers to gather the sensor inputs. These were chosen since they could easily be adapted to the challenge at hand since we had to rapidly prototype ideas on regular basis. The data was communicated both through serial and network connects which were specified to a certain sampling rate.

Pediatric Exoskeleton: Projects