Che Zulkhairi Abdullah

Path planning of the hybrid parallel robot for ankle rehabilitation

This paper presents a new configuration for ankle rehabilitation using a 9-DOF (degree of freedom) hybrid parallel robot. The robot contains nine linear actuators serially connecting two movable platforms and one stationary platform. The optimization is based on the singularity and dynamic analysis of the robot. The obtained data of the ankle motions from a series of experiments were applied to the model in order to investigate the motion of the end-effector and the force required for each actuator in a particular path. The end-effector tracking simulation results validated the proposed theoretical analysis of the required rehabilitation path of the foot.

Path’s Slicing Analysis as a Therapist’s Intervention Tool for Robotic Rehabilitation

The assisted limb rehabilitation process is commonly associated with advanced control of the affected limb through robotic assistance and human interference. The robotic element is only expected to be able to reproduce the motion suitable for large variations of patient’s condition within a reasonable accuracy and stiffness. Therapist’s intervention of fine-control is in the format of planar elements (like pelvis linkage) or joints (like knee), which relate to trajectory or orientation adjustments. The rehabilitation process has to consider the patient’s ability, limit and motion constraint that form those two factors. The parameters for controlling these is associated with kinematic, that defines the behaviour and characteristic of the lower limb. The developed 3D Python simulation system allows for this fine-tuning in the form of slice analysis and interval analysis. The results show that Bezier could be successfully used in various development aspects of parallel robots. The Hybrid and Hexapod robot configurations in this study can then be linked to a Haptic controller that runs on Python’s Haptic engine.

Development of a Low-cost Multimodal VR System for Engineering Design

Virtual Reality technologies are available at a lower cost than ever before. However, such systems are developed mainly for the consumer market, and inaccuracies in spatial judgements may make them unsuitable for specific applications like Engineering Design. There is evidence to suggest that the addition of haptic feedback may improve spatial judgements, but most commercially available haptic systems are impractical and unaffordable outside of specialist research settings and large enterprises. We describe the challenges for developing a multimodal VR system using only low-cost off-the-shelf technologies, and demonstrate a working prototype of a system which aims to overcome these issues.