Project

# Title Team Members TA Documents Sponsor
5 Iron Man Mouse
Senior Design Instructor's Award (FA21)
Jeff Chang
Yayati Pahuja
Zhiyuan Yang
Feiyu Zhang design_document1.pdf
design_document2.pdf
final_paper1.pdf
proposal1.pdf
# Problem:

Being an ECE student means that there is a high chance we are gonna sit in front of a computer for the majority of the day, especially during COVID times. This situation may lead to neck and lower back issues due to a long time of sedentary lifestyle. Therefore, it would be beneficial for us to get up and stretch for a while every now and then. However, exercising for a bit may distract us from working or studying and it might take some time to refocus. To control mice using our arm movements or hand gestures would be a way to enable us to get up and work at the same time. It is similar to the movie Iron Man when Tony Stark is working but without the hologram.

# Solution Overview:

The device would have a wrist band portion that acts as the tracker of the mouse pointer (implemented by accelerometer and perhaps optical sensors). A set of 3 finger cots with gyroscope or accelerometer are attached to the wrist band. These sensors as a whole would send data to a black box device (connected to the computer by USB) via bluetooth. The box would contain circuits to compute these translational/rotational data to imitate a mouse or trackpad movements with possible custom operation. Alternatively, we could have the wristband connected to a PC by bluetooth. In this case, a device driver on the OS is needed for the project to work.

# Solution Components:
Sensors (finger cots and wrist band):
1. 3-axis accelerometer attached to the wrist band portion of the device to collect translational movement (for mouse cursor tracking)
2. gyroscope attached to 3 finger cots portion to collect angular motion when user bend their fingers in different angles (for different clicking/zoom-in/etc operations)
3. (optional) optical sensors to help with accuracy if the accelerometer is not accurate enough. We could have infrared emitters set up around the screen and optical sensors on the wristband to help pinpoint cursor location.
4. (optional) flex sensors could also be used for finger cots to perform clicks in case the gyroscope proves to be inaccurate.

Power:
Lithium-ion battery with USB charging

Transmitter component:
1. A microcontroller to pre-process the data received from the 4 sensors. It can sort of integrate and synchronize the data before transmitting it.
2. A bluetooth chip that transmits the data to either the blackbox or the PC directly.

Receiver component:
1. Plan A: A box plugged into USB-A on PC. It has a bluetooth chip to receive data from the wristband, and a microcontroller to process the data into USB human interface device signals.
2. Plan B: the wristband is directly connected to the PC and we develop a device driver on the PC to process the data.


# Criterion for Success:
1. Basic Functionalities supported (left click, right click, scroll, cursor movement)
2. Advanced Functionalities supported(zoom in/out, custom operations eg. volume control)
3. Performance (accuracy & response time)
4. Physical qualities (easy to wear, durable, and battery life)

Recovery-Monitoring Knee Brace

Dong Hyun Lee, Jong Yoon Lee, Dennis Ryu

Featured Project

Problem:

Thanks to modern technology, it is easy to encounter a wide variety of wearable fitness devices such as Fitbit and Apple Watch in the market. Such devices are designed for average consumers who wish to track their lifestyle by counting steps or measuring heartbeats. However, it is rare to find a product for the actual patients who require both the real-time monitoring of a wearable device and the hard protection of a brace.

Personally, one of our teammates ruptured his front knee ACL and received reconstruction surgery a few years ago. After ACL surgery, it is common to wear a knee brace for about two to three months for protection from outside impacts, fast recovery, and restriction of movement. For a patient who is situated in rehabilitation after surgery, knee protection is an imperative recovery stage, but is often overlooked. One cannot deny that such a brace is also cumbersome to put on in the first place.

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Solution:

Our group aims to make a wearable device for people who require a knee brace by adding a health monitoring system onto an existing knee brace. The fundamental purpose is to protect the knee, but by adding a monitoring system we want to provide data and a platform for both doctor and patients so they can easily check the current status/progress of the injury.

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Audience:

1) Average person with leg problems

2) Athletes with leg injuries

3) Elderly people with discomforts

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Equipment:

Temperature sensors : perhaps in the form of electrodes, they will be used to measure the temperature of the swelling of the knee, which will indicate if recovery is going smoothly.

Pressure sensors : they will be calibrated such that a certain threshold of force must be applied by the brace to the leg. A snug fit is required for the brace to fulfill its job.

EMG circuit : we plan on constructing an EMG circuit based on op-amps, resistors, and capacitors. This will be the circuit that is intended for doctors, as it will detect muscle movement.

Development board: our main board will transmit the data from each of the sensors to a mobile interface via. Bluetooth. The user will be notified when the pressure sensors are not tight enough. For our purposes, the battery on the development will suffice, and we will not need additional dry cells.

The data will be transmitted to a mobile system, where it would also remind the user to wear the brace if taken off. To make sure the brace has a secure enough fit, pressure sensors will be calibrated to determine accordingly. We want to emphasize the hardware circuits that will be supplemented onto the leg brace.

We want to emphasize on the hardware circuit portion this brace contains. We have tested the temperature and pressure resistors on a breadboard by soldering them to resistors, and confirmed they work as intended by checking with a multimeter.

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