Project for the international collaboration between the French CNRS and the Armenian SCS:

Conceptual design and development of new devices for rehabilitation and facilitation of human body motive functions

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Objectives of the project

The project is devoted to the development of new devices which will be composed of electromechanical, piezoelectric and polymer - metal composite elements. The aim of the project is to propose novel weight support system leading to greater improvement in walking ability. It proposes also to provide biomechatronic systems’ modeling, research and conceptual design of these devices.

The Biomechatronic rehabilitation devices which will be developed in the framework of this project should be the new mechanical systems composed of mutually complementing and jointly acting biological and mechatronic units, which are united through synergetically integrated and jointly conformed action. These systems are intended to strengthen and compensate the motive functions of human body.

The particularity of these devices is the introduction of the flexible elements controlled by actuators and neuro-sensors representing the systems’ biological parts. Such an approach should be based on mechatronic study including the modeling of dynamic systems and material behavior.

Body weight support systems are being used for rehabilitation of locomotion in practices catering to a variety of patient populations including those with neural impairments, orthopedic injuries and degenerative diseases. These systems can be used to provide stability during locomotion and to help progress weight bearing according to a patient's needs. However, the known devices have the complicated structural schemes with the actuators that consume much energy. The actuality is stipulated by improvement of rehabilitation devices, particularly, the mechanical parameters, such as the weight, energy consumption and ergonomics. The development of lightweight systems that consume less energy can be easily used in practice.

The purpose of the project is to develop new technical solutions of rehabilitation devices with electromechanical, piezoelectric and polymer-metal composite elements. Please note that this is a new approach in the field of the design of rehabilitation devices. In this stage of the project is important to find new solutions and validate the suggested concepts by using CAD models. The multi-objective optimization will also be an important part of the project which should demonstrate the efficiency of the suggested solutions.