Data Acquisition System for Exoskeletons

Abstract

Data Acquisition system plays an important role in studying the biomechanics of joint motion, differentiate between pairs of movements done by a single joint, rehabilitation research, sports analysis and to provide the input orientation signal to the rehabilitation devices like exoskeletons etc. A real time portable motion sensing device is needed for the said purposes. Several conventional methods such as optical systems, magnetic systems, acoustic sensors etc. are used as motion sensing devices but there are certain drawbacks to these systems which prohibit using them in real time or to be used outdoors. To overcome the draw backs of the these methods, a real time portable motion sensing system was developed based on Inertial Measurement Unit (IMU). The IMU is a six-axis motion sensor with a 3-axis accelerometer and 3-axis gyro meter. The system developed gathers orientation data from different joints of the human body which serves as useful data to study the biomechanics of human joint motion and also serves to provide input signal to exoskeletons. This Data Acquisition system was utilized to carry out two studies; one on two different positions of human spine and the other on wrist joint motion.