Human kinematic optimal control learning and wearable inertial measurement unit alignment for rehabilitation

Physiotherapy is a type of rehabilitation that aims to restore a patient’s quality of life after an injury, surgery, or stroke by improving their mobility. Through prescribed exercises and specialized equipment, physiotherapy helps the patient to regain their muscle strength, range of motion, and natural movement. Unfortunately, only rudimentary tools are available to the therapists for assessment and monitoring of patients. Our work focuses on developing wearable technologies that can help therapists with patient assessment and progress tracking. The proposed research will utilize the sensor data to learn a motion model for a patient. The learned motion model can be used to compare the patient’s performance to that of a healthy individual and to provide objective progress measures over long rehabilitation periods.

Faculty Supervisor:

Dana Kulic;James Tung

Student:

Partner:

Cardon Rehabilitation and Medical Equipment Ltd

Discipline:

Engineering

Sector:

Manufacturing

University:

University of Waterloo

Program: