BLUEdev has conluded its participation to a 24 months research project in the context of «ΑΜΥΝΑΠΚΑ» program which was co-financed by the Greek General Secretary of Research and Technology of the Hellenic Ministry of Development, National Strategic Plan for Development, Metric 3.4.
This project targetted to the “Development of Computational Intelligence Methods for the rehabilitation control system of the lower limbs” and has a total budget of €600.000. Its objective was the development of a control system design methodology for the replacement of lost neural activity through functional electrical neuromuscular stimulation.
When the muscles and joints are well functioned and the pathology is based on the nervous system, technically produced electrical pulses from electrodes can substitute nervous stimulation. The features of the electrical pulses (amplitude, frequency and pulse-width) and the non-linear behavior of the muscles to the same stimulation patterns (a specific stimulation pattern does not always provoke the same respond from the muscle), require sophisticated control systems. Control systems based on artificial intelligence methods offer solutions to complex problems, like the ones that have to do with the neuromuscular system.
The control system that we have developed is based in scientific achievements applied in the areas of artificial intelligence and decision making, i.e. neural networks, fuzzy logic, and genetic algorithms. And these have been implemented by making use of innovative stepping control optimization metrics and a proprietary library for fuzzy logic techniques.
The software application has been developed on the Microsoft .NET Micro Framework platform and is based on our Right Rule MF library, a tool for easy, fast and accurate implementation of a fuzzy logic inference engine.
The project was managed by the University of Patras, and was a joint activity of two more companies besides us, Anko SA and Options Ltd.