Pro-Balancer

PROJECT DESCRIPTION:

Summary

The Pro-Balancer is an intelligent balance board that consists of a disc platform with a hemispheric base, supported by eight equally spaced compression springs and two draw wire displacement sensors. It provides balance difficulty level adjustment, real-time visual and auditory feedback, and key performance indicators for physiotherapy professionals to monitor the progress of rehabilitation in balance training.

Introduction

Balance ability has long been associated with various musculoskeletal and neurological problems. Balance can be improved through various training regimes in rehabilitation which shown to prevent injuries. However, therapists are facing the following problems in the current way of using wobble boards for static or dynamic balancing exercises:

• Unable to provide adjustment of difficulty level
• No recording system of patients' centre of gravity (COG)
• Problem in exercise prescription as patients' balance ability is solely judged by subjective observation by therapists.
• Although there are such computerized systems, these are comparatively costly and cumbersome for a usual outpatient clinic.

Design

• A Nylon polymer disc platform with a hemispheric base that is constrained to allow only 2 degrees-of-freedom tilt (± 10°) motion.
• Disc platform is supported by eight equally spaced compression springs that are independently adjustable.
• Measurements from two orthogonally placed draw-wire displacement sensors are fed into a Motorola 68HC11 based microcontroller to compute the platform orientation and other key performance indicators.
• Real-time numerical and graphical visual feedback and audio cues are provided by the control console.

Advantages

• Ability to achieve three basic balancing tests/exercises:
  1. multi-axial balancing
  2. anterior/posterior balancing
  3. left/right balancing under different combinations of the conditions:
     1. visual/non-visual (open/close eyes)
     2. single footed/both feet
• Provision of five difficulty levels for balance training to cater for patients with different prognoses and rehabilitation progress.
• Real-time visual display gives patients instant knowledge of their spatial orientation and provides reliable visual and vesticular cues to help them to override faulty proprioceptive feedback.
• Allow therapists to evaluate and keep track of the progress of the patients from the quantitative data computed from exercises.
• Performance quantification is helpful in evaluating different rehabilitation protocols for balance training.
• Relieve supervision and monitoring load of therapists.

GRANT:

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PERSONNEL:

Dr. ANG Wei Tech
Ph.D.

Assistant Professor

wtang@ntu.edu.sg

Akshay MATHUR

Exchange Student
May 2006 - July 2006

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