AlterSpace

A biomedical engineering project created to help the efficiency of physical therapy for patients with muscoloskeletal injuries.

The system was designed to compare pre-existing data of correct movements that the patients should have followed during the treatment, with the new ones made by the patient and correct them in real-time.

The design of the system was made entirely by me. The math algorithm for the data comparison was made by two other team members.

Hardware

A combination between IMU - Inertial Measurement Unit - sensors and a custom-built indoor tracking system (to eliminate the cumulative errors from the IMU sensors and to track down the user in 3D space) was used to follow the movement of the patient during the exercises. The tracking system was created from scratch by me, using ultrasound to ease the building process and manteinance and to keep the costs as low as possible.

Software

The integration between the different systems, as well as the output for the user, was made entirely in Unity.

The microprocessors for the tracking system were programmed with MPLAB X and, using a pre-built serial communication library available at the moment, Arduino for the interaction with Unity.

The Math

The data gathered during the trial phase would have been compared to the new ones from the patient of the treatment. Every time the data would have diverged too much, for mistakes from user's tiredness, the system would have alerted the patient and showed where more attention was needed to complete the exercise.

The Birth and Death

The business plan for the startup was approved and certified by the local agencies that were designed for that purpose.

The project itself has remained in the prototype phase, for lack of funding to complete the period needed to gather the model data and for the new paths that were offered to the other team members.