• Transactions of the Korean Society of Mechanical Engineers A
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• v.38 no.8
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• pp.837-848
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• 2014

This paper describes the development of a walking assistive robot for effective self-rehabilitation for elderly people facing an inconvenience in walking. The main features of the developed robot are enhanced safety and mobility using the baby walker and electric wheelchair mechanisms and an accurate walking tracking control algorithm using potentiometers and stereo cameras. Specifically, a pelvis supporter is designed to prevent the user from falling down and reduce the burden on their legs, and electric motors are used for easy locomotion with low effort. Next, the walking intention and direction of the user are automatically recognized by using potentiometers attached at the pelvis supporter so that the robot can track the user, and the rapidity and accuracy of the tracking were increased by applying a lower-body motion analysis algorithm with stereo cameras. Finally, the user-tracking performance of the developed robot was experimentally verified through stepwise walking assistance experiments.

• Journal of rehabilitation welfare engineering & assistive technology
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• v.3 no.1
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• pp.41-47
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• 2009

This paper describes requirements and test methods for the safety of electromyographs and evoked response equipments to be used for medical examination of the central nerve system and motor-sensory functions in cortex. We first establish internationally harmonized requirements for the safety, and then propose a test procedure and test methods corresponding to the requirements based on the international standards. However requirements for the performance of each equipments are not specified in order to admit maker's specifications. Using a electromyography equipment we verified validity of the test methods proposed. Results of this study can be used as a standard for approval of Korea Food and Drug Administration (KFDA).

• Journal of rehabilitation welfare engineering & assistive technology
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• v.3 no.1
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• pp.15-20
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• 2009

The purpose of this study was to investigate behavior to protect medical record among physical therapists(PTs). This study conducted a survey through the self-written questionnaires from 69 clinical PTs to understanding to protect patient' medical record. The result indicated that the behavior of PTs was not average 1, but the older PTs and healthier PTs, more protective patient's medical record(p<.01). The revision of PTs' behavior attitude and intention subjective was helpful to improve their behavior to protect patent's medical record.

• Journal of rehabilitation welfare engineering & assistive technology
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• v.6 no.2
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• pp.9-14
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• 2012

In this study, an advanced knee joint for active prosthesis leg driven by a linear actuator is suggested. The structure of knee joints of existing active prosthesis legs consists of three links. This kind of linkage requires large torque to drive the active prosthesis legs. Thus a new linkage structure is suggested to solve such problem in this paper. Motion characteristics of the suggested linkage are examined in the simulation. The motion simulation results show that the proposed linkage is able to imitate human gait cycles with the half of linear actuator speed in existing linkages.

• Journal of rehabilitation welfare engineering & assistive technology
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• v.6 no.2
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• pp.55-62
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• 2012

In this paper we propose a control system to preserve the interior angle between back section and upper leg section to be larger than 90 degrees using a single limit switch. To design the control system we analyze the kinematics of actuation mechanisms for the back section and the upper leg section, and find out an optimal solution for the controller design. Using a prototype control system we perform experiments to test the controller performance, and show that the interior angle between the back section and the upper leg section is always preserved larger than 90 degree. From the experimental results, we show the proposed control system is feasible to keep the body posture stability.

• Journal of rehabilitation welfare engineering & assistive technology
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• v.7 no.2
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• pp.7-12
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• 2013

In this paper, we propose a brushless DC motor drive system for active knee prosthesis and low-cost estimation method for phase current from DC-link current. To control motor torque directly, current sensing is very important and current sensing point should be synchronized with voltage switching command to minimize the effect of switching noise in current measurement, For maintaining small form factor, simplifying control schemes and achieving low-cost system, control schemes using DC-link current are used. Moreover, we incorporated phase current estimation method using analog MUX for minimizing current estimation error between DC-link current and phase current. The validity of the proposed system is verified through experimental works.

• Journal of rehabilitation welfare engineering & assistive technology
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• v.7 no.2
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• pp.35-40
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• 2013

In WBAN environment, it is very important to achieve energy efficiency of master and nodes, At the same time, a master also plays an important role in collecting data from nodes and controlling the nodes. By maintaining a master properly, any kinds of situation can be handled. Therefore, low power MAC protocol between a master and a node is highly required appropriately. We propose an improved MAC protocol by simply changing the frame structure of WBAN system. The simulation results show that the proposed scheme attains a lot of saving of energy consumption of master and each node compared with IEEE 802.15.6 and conventional schemes.

• Journal of rehabilitation welfare engineering & assistive technology
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• v.7 no.2
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• pp.69-74
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• 2013

In this paper, we propose the pattern classification algorithm of recognizing wrist movements based on electromyogram(EMG) to raise the recognition rate. We consider 30 characteristics of EMG signals wirh the root mean square(RMS) and the difference absolute standard deviation value(DASDV) for the extraction of precise features from EMG signals. To get the groups of each wrist movement, we estimated 2-dimension features. On this basis, we divide each group into two parts with mean to compare and promote the recognition rate of pattern classification effectively. For the motion classification based on EMG, the k-nearest neighbor(k-NN) is used. In this paper, the recognition rate is 92.59% and 0.84% higher than the study before.

• Journal of rehabilitation welfare engineering & assistive technology
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• v.10 no.2
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• pp.127-132
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• 2016

The purpose of the study is to identify the accessibility of OpenCouresWare(OCW) from the perspective of college students with visual and hearing impairments. Six students with visual impairments(3 blind and 3 low vision) and four students with hearing impairments(2 deaf, 2 hard of hearing) implemented usability testing. Two modules in KOCW were selected for testing. Students implemented usability testing and then each individual case was analyzed through quantitative and qualitative methods. As results, the degree of usability and accessibility in two modules indicated low level. Implications and recommendations for designing OCW module based on the results were suggested.

• Journal of Institute of Control, Robotics and Systems
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• v.21 no.6
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• pp.518-523
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• 2015

This paper proposes a gait phase classifier using a Recurrent Neural Network (RNN). Walking is a type of dynamic system, and as such it seems that the classifier made by using a general feed forward neural network structure is not appropriate. It is known that an RNN is suitable to model a dynamic system. Because the proposed RNN is simple, we use a back propagation algorithm to train the weights of the network. The input data of the RNN is the lower body's joint angles and angular velocities which are acquired by using the lower limb exoskeleton robot, ROBIN-H1. The classifier categorizes a gait cycle as two phases, swing and stance. In the experiment for performance verification, we compared the proposed method and general feed forward neural network based method and showed that the proposed method is superior.