An automatic control system was designed to suppress pathological tremor on wrist joint with two degrees of freedom (DoF) using functional electrical stimulation (FES). The tremor occurring in the wrist flexion-extension and adduction-abduction was expected to be suppressed. A musculoskeletal model of wrist joint was developed to serve as the control plant, which covered four main muscles (extensor carpi radialis longus, extensor carpi ulnaris, flexor carpi radialis, and flexor carpi ulnaris). A second-order mechanical impedance model was used to describe the wrist skeletal dynamics. The core work was to design the controller and a hybrid control strategy was proposed, which combined inverse model based on feed forward control and linear quadratic regulator (LQR) optimal control. Performance of the system was tested under different input conditions (step signal, sinusoidal signal, and real data of a patient). The results indicated that the proposed hybrid controller could attenuate over 94% of the tremor amplitude on multi-DoF wrist joint.
Robot-assisted fracture reduction usually involves fixing the proximal end of the fracture and driving the distal end of the fracture to the proximal end in a planned reduction path. In order to improve the accuracy and safety of reduction surgery, it is necessary to know the changing rule of muscle force and reduction force during reduction. Fracture reduction force was analyzed based on the muscle force of femoral. In this paper, a femoral skeletal muscle model named as PA-MTM was presented based on the four elements of skeletal muscle model. With this, pinnate angle of the skeletal muscle was considered, which had an effect on muscle force properties. Here, the muscle force of skeletal muscles in different muscle models was compared and analyzed. The muscle force and the change of the reduction force under different reduction paths were compared and simulated. The results showed that the greater the pinnate angle was, the greater the influence of muscle strength was. The biceps femoris short head played a major role in the femoral fracture reduction; the force in the z direction contributed the majority to the resulting force with maximums of 472.18 N and 497.28 N for z and resultant, respectively, and the rationality of the new musculoskeletal model was verified.