Planet Arduino

[Diego Marino] and his colleagues at the Politecnico di Torino (Polytechnic University of Turin, Italy) designed a prototype that allows for patients with motor deficits, such as spinal cord injury (SCI), to do rehabilitation via Functional Electrical Stimulation. They devised a system that records and interprets muscle signals from the physiotherapist and then stimulates specific muscles, in the patient, via an electro-stimulator.

The acquisition system is based on a BITalino board that records the Surface Electromyography (sEMG) signal from the muscles of the physiotherapist, while they perform a specific exercise designed for the patient’s rehabilitation plan. The BITalino uses Bluetooth to send the data to a PC where the data is properly crunched in Matlab in order to recognize and to isolate the muscular activity patterns.

After that, the signals are ‘replayed’ on the patient using a relay-board connected to a Globus Genesy 600 electro-stimulator. This relay board hack is mostly because the Globus Genesy is not programmable so this was a fast way for them to implement the stimulator. In their video we can see the muscle activation being replayed immediately after the ‘physiotherapist’ performs the movement. It’s clearly a prototype but it does show promising results.

It reminds us of the Myoelectric Hand, with humans instead. We featured an EMG tutorial a while back for those curious about this topic. Without taking the merit out of excellent and needed medical research, we all wait for the day that all our bio-signals can be easy read and translated to, let’s say, a huge avatar robot like METHOD-2. Right? Right?…

BITalino is designed for anyone interested in building self-tracking applications based on information from your body.

BITalino is a low-cost, purpose-built, all-in-one hardware and software toolkit designed for quick and easy creation of cool projects with body signals, development of quantified self wearable devices or apps, and/or learning how to build medical devices. Comparative professional-grade tools for this purpose can easily cost in excess of $10,000; our vision is to make them available for anyone, and harness the power and creative thinking of the open-source movement to boost innovation in biosignal-based applications in unprecedented ways.

BITalino (r)evolution - [Link]

Printoo’s flexible modules provide the ideal form factor to quickly create first product concepts for smart wearables devices. BITalino (http://www.bitalino.com/) is revolutionizing DIY health tracking by making physiological sensors to measure the body’s biosignals accessible to all. Combine the two and it has never been easier to create revolutionary smart wearable concepts to life.

With Printoo, a number of inputs were already available: accelerometer, temperature sensor, capacitive and light sensors. BITalino’s modules for Electromyography (EMG), Electrodermal Activity (EDA) and Electrocardiogram (ECG) can be easily connected to Printoo through a flexible coupling board. Combine these inputs with flexible LEDs (in strip or matrix form), electrochromic displays, a sound buzzer, as well as Bluetooth Low Energy connectivity, and the possibilities are endless.

BITalino – Create projects with physiological sensors - [Link]