Product Development of Assistive Technology for the Feet of a Person with Cerebral Palsy

Abstract

The general inclusion of children with motor disabilities is usually made difficult by the prejudice of society and by the complications they face when performing daily activities. In order to minimize the effect of these barriers, they can use Assistive Technology products, such as customized orthoses. This research aimed to develop a product of this sort with the help and interaction of various professionals, such as occupational therapists, physiotherapists and graphical expressionists. In order to obtain the measurements of the limb of the person with disabilities, a 3D scanning technology was used and, for the construction of the orthosis, the chosen technology was Fused Deposition Modeling (FDM). Initially, in this study, after a child with cerebral palsy was selected, an occupational therapist and a physiotherapist made the plaster mold of one of the lower limbs. After this step, the Graphic Expression professional scanned three-dimensionally the geometry of the plaster mold and treated the three-dimensional mesh until obtaining the desired surface. The final steps consisted in generating a 3D CAD model based on the acquired surface, which resulted in the three-dimensional model of the desired orthosis, and generating the physical model of the product through Additive Manufacturing. This method presented good results when applied in a case study described in this article.