skip to main content
10.1145/1328491.1328543acmconferencesArticle/Chapter ViewAbstractPublication Pagesi-createConference Proceedingsconference-collections
research-article

Design and development of a novel balancer with variable difficulty for training and evaluation

Published:23 April 2007Publication History

ABSTRACT

This paper proposes a novel, portable and cost-effective balance trainer with all necessary important features to improve the reach of rehabilitation to the masses. There are three factors that contribute to a person's ability to maintain standing balance---proprioceptive feedback (from the joints), vision, and the vestibular system. These systems can be affected by injury, infection, or brain damage caused by stroke. One example of such injuries is ankle injury. A large focus of the physiotherapy and sports medicine community is using postural-control tasks to prevent, assess and rehabilitate patients.

Unfortunately, there are presently two extreme ends of balance training devices. On one end there are the high-end equipments which only large hospitals are capable of buying. On the other end are the simple balance boards which offer very limited features.

Thus, the authors proposed a novel, portable and cost-effective balance trainer with most of the necessary important features to improve the reach of rehabilitation to the masses. The device has a small footprint, incorporating only the most important and frequently used functions. These functions include being able to provide different levels of difficulty, setting different difficulty in different directions, storing of patients' performance, real-time visual feedback to aid the patients and different types of modes for different purposes. Springs are used to vary the moments, which will actually vary the difficulty levels. This is due to the fact that balancing is actually about keeping the equilibrium moments to be zero.

References

  1. M. Freeman, "Instability of the foot after injuries to the lateral ligament of the ankle", J Bone Joint Surg Br., pp 669--677, 1965.Google ScholarGoogle ScholarCross RefCross Ref
  2. M. Freeman, M. Dean and I. Hanham, "The etiology and prevention of functional instability of the foot", J Bone Joint Surg Br., pp 678--685, 1965.Google ScholarGoogle ScholarCross RefCross Ref
  3. M. Freeman and B. Wyke, "Articular contributions to limb muscle reflexes: the effects of partial neurectomy of the knee joint on postural reflexes", J Bone Joint Surg Br., pp 5361--6368, 1966.Google ScholarGoogle Scholar
  4. B. L. Riemann, "Is There a Link Between Chronic Ankle Instability and Postural Instability?", Journal of Athletic Training, pp 386--393, 2002.Google ScholarGoogle Scholar
  5. National Institute of Neurological Disorders and Stroke, www.ninds.nih.gov/disorders/stroke/poststrokerehab.htmGoogle ScholarGoogle Scholar
  6. J. B. Foster, "Study Links Training Conditions to Balance Gains After Stroke", BioMechanics, Jan., 2005.Google ScholarGoogle Scholar
  7. C. Wlll, L. E. Oddsson, F. B. Horak, D. W. Wrisley, and M. Dozza, "Applications of Vibrotactile Display of Body Tilt for Rehabilitation", IEEE 26th Annual International Conferece of EMBS, San Francisco, CA, USA, Sept., 2004.Google ScholarGoogle Scholar
  8. R. P. Jaime, Z. Matjacic, and K. J. Hunt, "Paraplegic Standing Supported by FES-Controlled Ankle Stiffness", IEEE Transactions on Neural Systems and Rehabilitation Engineering, Vol. 10, No. 4, Dec., 2002.Google ScholarGoogle ScholarCross RefCross Ref
  9. Nara, H., Ino, S., Tanaka, T., Izumi, and T. Ifukube, "A Proposal of a Rehabilitation Method for Elderly People having Poor Equilibrium Sense using Visual and Auditory Stimulation", IEEE International Conference on Systems, Man and Cybernetics, Tokyo, Japan, 1999.Google ScholarGoogle Scholar
  10. R. Barclay-Goddard, T. Stevenson, W. Poluha, M. E. K. Moffatt, and S. P. Taback, "Force platform feedback for standing balance training after stroke", The Cochrane Database of Systematic Reviews, Issue 3, 2004.Google ScholarGoogle Scholar
  11. A. T. McGuine, J. J. Greene, T. Best, and G. Leverson, "Balance as a predictor of Ankle Injuries in High School Basketball Players", Clinical Journal of Sport Medicine, Vol. 10, Issue 4, pp 239--244, Oct., 2000.Google ScholarGoogle ScholarCross RefCross Ref
  12. P. A. Goldie, O. M. Evans, and T. M. Bach, "Postural control following inversion injuries of the ankle", Arch. Phys. Med. Rehabil, Vol. 75, pp. 969--975, 1994.Google ScholarGoogle ScholarCross RefCross Ref
  13. T. L. Kauffman, L. M. Nashner, and L. K. Allison, "Balance is a critical parameter in orthopedic rehabilitation," Orthopedic Physical Therapy Clinics of North America; New Technologies in Phys Ther Vol. 6, Issue 1, pp. 1059--1516, 1997.Google ScholarGoogle Scholar

Recommendations

Comments

Login options

Check if you have access through your login credentials or your institution to get full access on this article.

Sign in
  • Published in

    cover image ACM Conferences
    i-CREATe '07: Proceedings of the 1st international convention on Rehabilitation engineering & assistive technology: in conjunction with 1st Tan Tock Seng Hospital Neurorehabilitation Meeting
    April 2007
    272 pages
    ISBN:9781595938527
    DOI:10.1145/1328491

    Copyright © 2007 ACM

    Permission to make digital or hard copies of all or part of this work for personal or classroom use is granted without fee provided that copies are not made or distributed for profit or commercial advantage and that copies bear this notice and the full citation on the first page. Copyrights for components of this work owned by others than ACM must be honored. Abstracting with credit is permitted. To copy otherwise, or republish, to post on servers or to redistribute to lists, requires prior specific permission and/or a fee. Request permissions from [email protected]

    Publisher

    Association for Computing Machinery

    New York, NY, United States

    Publication History

    • Published: 23 April 2007

    Permissions

    Request permissions about this article.

    Request Permissions

    Check for updates

    Qualifiers

    • research-article
  • Article Metrics

    • Downloads (Last 12 months)3
    • Downloads (Last 6 weeks)0

    Other Metrics

PDF Format

View or Download as a PDF file.

PDF

eReader

View online with eReader.

eReader