Making a smart knee brace. Who wants to help?

Let's Make Robots Project Ideas
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Hello All,

I have a fairly new idea for a wearable. I recently wrote a prediction model while working in a motion analysis lab that is able to determine the probability that a person will incur a chronic running injury based on patters found in running gait. The problem is, this was done using an infrared motion capture system (expensive and not easily accessible). I want to make this more accessible by building a wearable device that can give feedback to the user. Also, I want to incorerate the ability to apply forces for conditioning, gait retraining etc. It’s a bit of a long shot but, I’m in the St. Louis, MO area if anyone wants to physically help. Otherwise, just let me know what you think. Like I said, this is a pretty new idea and I haven’t started the build yet.

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Hey there,

I like the idea.

I’m not sure I can be of any help but maybe I can suggest some sensors to retrieve data of someone running.

Here is a flexible sensor to track any flexion of the knee: https://www.robotshop.com/en/22-10k-flexible-sensor.html

Here is a force sensor that could help to track the weight of different area of a foot step: https://www.robotshop.com/en/single-point-10mm-force-sensor-solder-tab.html

This is more of an experimental kit but these EMG detectors would be perfect to detect any muscle signals: https://www.robotshop.com/en/seeedstudio-grove-emg-detector.html

You could also use a piezo to track any vibration or impact: https://www.robotshop.com/en/sfe-piezo-element.html

Theses are only ideas and brainstorming.
Let me know if this helps and I will definitely be interested in seeing the progress of this project.

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Thank you for the suggestions! I’ve been mulling over quite a few different sensors. I’ve been thinking about just using a series of gyroscopes and accelerometers so that I can create 6 degrees of freedom and then using Kinematics/Inverse Kinematics to find values at the joints that I need. However, that flex sensor may make at least the knee specifically a bit simpler!

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