scholarly journals Design of an FPGA-Based Fuzzy Feedback Controller for Closed-Loop FES in Knee Joint Model

Micromachines ◽  
2021 ◽  
Vol 12 (8) ◽  
pp. 968
Author(s):  
Emilia Noorsal ◽  
Saharul Arof ◽  
Saiful Zaimy Yahaya ◽  
Zakaria Hussain ◽  
Daniel Kho ◽  
...  

Functional electrical stimulation (FES) device has been widely used by spinal cord injury (SCI) patients in their rehab exercises to restore motor function to their paralysed muscles. The major challenge of muscle contraction induced by FES is early muscle fatigue due to the open-loop stimulation strategy. To reduce the early muscle fatigue phenomenon, a closed-loop FES system is proposed to track the angle of the limb’s movement and provide an accurate amount of charge according to the desired reference angle. Among the existing feedback controllers, fuzzy logic controller (FLC) has been found to exhibit good control performance in handling complex non-linear systems without developing any complex mathematical model. Recently, there has been considerable interest in the implementation of FLC in hardware embedded systems. Therefore, in this paper, a digital fuzzy feedback controller (FFC) embedded in a field-programmable gate array (FPGA) board was proposed. The digital FFC mainly consists of an analog-to-digital converter (ADC) Data Acquisition and FLC sub-modules. The FFC was designed to monitor and control the progress of knee extension movement by regulating the stimulus pulse width duration to meet the target angle. The knee is expected to extend to a maximum reference angle setting (70°, 40° or 30°) from its normal position of 0° once the stimulus charge is applied to the muscle by the FES device. Initially, the FLC was modelled using MATLAB Simulink. Then, the FLC was hardcoded into digital logic using hardware description language (HDL) Verilog codes. Thereafter, the performance of the digital FLC was tested with a knee extension model using the HDL co-simulation technique in MATLAB Simulink. Finally, for real-time verification, the designed digital FFC was downloaded to the Intel FPGA (DE2-115) board. The digital FFC utilized only 4% of the total FPGA (Cyclone IV E) logic elements (LEs) and required 238 µs to regulate stimulus pulse width data, including 3 µs for the FLC computation. The high processing speed of the digital FFC enables the stimulus pulse width duration to be updated every stimulation cycle. Furthermore, the implemented digital FFC has demonstrated good control performance in accurately controlling the stimulus pulse width duration to reach the desired reference angle with very small overshoot (1.4°) and steady-state error (0.4°). These promising results are very useful for a real-world closed-loop FES application.

2014 ◽  
Vol 525 ◽  
pp. 583-587
Author(s):  
Bing Tu ◽  
Wei Zhang ◽  
Teng Xi Zhan

This paper presented a excitation liquid-cooled retarder control system based on a microprocessor MC9SXS128. In order to achieve the constant speed, It used PWM to adjust the output current of excitation liquid-cooled retarder. It analyzed and calculated the inductance value in PWM output circuit and also analyzed the excitation liquid-cooled retarder control systematical mathematical model . It divided the brake stalls based on the current flowing through the field coil. by adding the PID closed-loop control system, the retarder could quickly reach the set speed. It tested the PID control algorithm at the experiments in retarder drum test rig and the results show that the control algorithm has good control performance to meet the application requirements.


2020 ◽  
Vol 65 (4) ◽  
pp. 461-468
Author(s):  
Jannatul Naeem ◽  
Nur Azah Hamzaid ◽  
Amelia Wong Azman ◽  
Manfred Bijak

AbstractFunctional electrical stimulation (FES) has been used to produce force-related activities on the paralyzed muscle among spinal cord injury (SCI) individuals. Early muscle fatigue is an issue in all FES applications. If not properly monitored, overstimulation can occur, which can lead to muscle damage. A real-time mechanomyography (MMG)-based FES system was implemented on the quadriceps muscles of three individuals with SCI to generate an isometric force on both legs. Three threshold drop levels of MMG-root mean square (MMG-RMS) feature (thr50, thr60, and thr70; representing 50%, 60%, and 70% drop from initial MMG-RMS values, respectively) were used to terminate the stimulation session. The mean stimulation time increased when the MMG-RMS drop threshold increased (thr50: 22.7 s, thr60: 25.7 s, and thr70: 27.3 s), indicating longer sessions when lower performance drop was allowed. Moreover, at thr70, the torque dropped below 50% from the initial value in 14 trials, more than at thr50 and thr60. This is a clear indication of muscle fatigue detection using the MMG-RMS value. The stimulation time at thr70 was significantly longer (p = 0.013) than that at thr50. The results demonstrated that a real-time MMG-based FES monitoring system has the potential to prevent the onset of critical muscle fatigue in individuals with SCI in prolonged FES sessions.


2019 ◽  
Vol 6 ◽  
pp. 205566831982580 ◽  
Author(s):  
Ruslinda Ruslee ◽  
Jennifer Miller ◽  
Henrik Gollee

Introduction: Functional electrical stimulation is a common technique used in the rehabilitation of individuals with a spinal cord injury to produce functional movement of paralysed muscles. However, it is often associated with rapid muscle fatigue which limits its applications. Methods: The objective of this study is to investigate the effects on the onset of fatigue of different multi-electrode patterns of stimulation via multiple pairs of electrodes using doublet pulses: Synchronous stimulation is compared to asynchronous stimulation patterns which are activated sequentially (AsynS) or randomly (AsynR), mimicking voluntary muscle activation by targeting different motor units. We investigated these three different approaches by applying stimulation to the gastrocnemius muscle repeatedly for 10 min (300 ms stimulation followed by 700 ms of no-stimulation) with 40 Hz effective frequency for all protocols and doublet pulses with an inter-pulse-interval of 6 ms. Eleven able-bodied volunteers (28 ± 3 years old) participated in this study. Ultrasound videos were recorded during stimulation to allow evaluation of changes in muscle morphology. The main fatigue indicators we focused on were the normalised fatigue index, fatigue time interval and pre-post twitch–tetanus ratio. Results: The results demonstrate that asynchronous stimulation with doublet pulses gives a higher normalised fatigue index (0.80 ± 0.08 and 0.87 ± 0.08) for AsynS and AsynR, respectively, than synchronous stimulation (0.62 ± 0.06). Furthermore, a longer fatigue time interval for AsynS (302.2 ± 230.9 s) and AsynR (384.4 ± 279.0 s) compared to synchronous stimulation (68.0 ± 30.5 s) indicates that fatigue occurs later during asynchronous stimulation; however, this was only found to be statistically significant for one of two methods used to calculate the group mean. Although no significant difference was found in pre-post twitch–tetanus ratio, there was a trend towards these effects. Conclusion: In this study, we proposed an asynchronous stimulation pattern for the application of functional electrical stimulation and investigated its suitability for reducing muscle fatigue compared to previous methods. The results show that asynchronous multi-electrode stimulation patterns with doublet pulses may improve fatigue resistance in functional electrical stimulation applications in some conditions.


2013 ◽  
Vol 464 ◽  
pp. 253-257
Author(s):  
Hui Fang Chen

This paper takes the automatic control system of controllable pitch propeller in a multipurpose ocean tug as an example to describe the application of the S7-200 series PLC in the control system of 4500 horse power controllable pitch propeller in detail. The principle of control system is addressed, as well as the hardware configuration, the design idea of the main software and control process. The system shows high reliability, accuracy and good control performance in practical in practical running.


1996 ◽  
Vol 81 (5) ◽  
pp. 1891-1900 ◽  
Author(s):  
Charles S. Fulco ◽  
Steven F. Lewis ◽  
Peter N. Frykman ◽  
Robert Boushel ◽  
Sinclair Smith ◽  
...  

Fulco, Charles S., Steven F. Lewis, Peter N. Frykman, Robert Boushel, Sinclair Smith, Everett A. Harman, Allen Cymerman, and Kent B. Pandolf. Muscle fatigue and exhaustion during dynamic leg exercise in normoxia and hypobaric hypoxia. J. Appl. Physiol. 81(5): 1891–1900, 1996.—Using an exercise device that integrates maximal voluntary static contraction (MVC) of knee extensor muscles with dynamic knee extension, we compared progressive muscle fatigue, i.e., rate of decline in force-generating capacity, in normoxia (758 Torr) and hypobaric hypoxia (464 Torr). Eight healthy men performed exhaustive constant work rate knee extension (21 ± 3 W, 79 ± 2 and 87 ± 2% of 1-leg knee extension O2 peak uptake for normoxia and hypobaria, respectively) from knee angles of 90–150° at a rate of 1 Hz. MVC (90° knee angle) was performed before dynamic exercise and during ≤5-s pauses every 2 min of dynamic exercise. MVC force was 578 ± 29 N in normoxia and 569 ± 29 N in hypobaria before exercise and fell, at exhaustion, to similar levels (265 ± 10 and 284 ± 20 N for normoxia and hypobaria, respectively; P > 0.05) that were higher ( P < 0.01) than peak force of constant work rate knee extension (98 ± 10 N, 18 ± 3% of MVC). Time to exhaustion was 56% shorter for hypobaria than for normoxia (19 ± 5 vs. 43 ± 7 min, respectively; P < 0.01), and rate of right leg MVC fall was nearly twofold greater for hypobaria than for normoxia (mean slope = −22.3 vs. −11.9 N/min, respectively; P < 0.05). With increasing duration of dynamic exercise for normoxia and hypobaria, integrated electromyographic activity during MVC fell progressively with MVC force, implying attenuated maximal muscle excitation. Exhaustion, per se, was postulated to relate more closely to impaired shortening velocity than to failure of force-generating capacity.


1994 ◽  
Vol 116 (2) ◽  
pp. 244-249 ◽  
Author(s):  
J. Hu ◽  
J. H. Vogel

A dynamic model of injection molding developed from physical considerations is used to select PID gains for pressure control during the packing phase of thermo-plastic injection molding. The relative importance of various aspects of the model and values for particular physical parameters were identified experimentally. The controller gains were chosen by pole-zero cancellation and root-locus methods, resulting in good control performance. Both open and closed-loop system responses were predicted and verified, with good overall agreement.


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