SYNTHESIS OF A PARALLEL MANIPULATOR BASED REHABILITATION CERVICAL COLLAR FOR C-SPINE INJURED PATIENTS, 27-34.

Arockia Selvakumar Arockia Doss,∗ Pavan Kalyan Lingampally,∗ and Latifah Nurahmi∗∗

Keywords

Parallel mechanism, lower-mobility, type synthesis, constraintscrew-based synthesis, dimensional synthesis, MATLAB∗ School of Mechanical Engineering, Vellore Institute ofTechnology, Vandalur to Kelambakkam Road, Chennai,Tamil Nadu, India; e-mail: [email protected],{arockia.selvakumar, lpavan.kalyan2015}@vit.ac.in∗∗ Department of Mechanical Engineering, Institut TeknologiSepuluh Nopember, Jl. Teknik Kimia, Keputih, Kec. Sukolilo,Kota SBY, Jawa Timur 60111, Indonesia; e

Abstract

Parallel manipulators (PMs) having lesser than six degrees-of- freedom are said to be lower-mobility parallel mechanism. In this paper, type synthesis is studied using the constraint screw-based synthesis method, and dimensional synthesis for the rotational- prismatic-spherical PM is performed using the geometrical param- eters of the human neck. Type synthesis aided in determining the link twists, kinematic chain and arrangement of the kinematic pairs. Link lengths, dimensions of the top, base platform and the initial angle between the base platform and the link are considered for the dimensional synthesis. Based on the synthesis performed, MATLAB simulations are carried out for the mechanism. A comparative study on dimensional synthesis is carried out for three different dimensions of the cervical collars. The outcome of the synthesis helped in the arrangement of the link kinematic pair in a sequence and finalizing the dimensions for the top and base platform. This aided in finding the tilt angle of the top platform for different dimensions of the device. Based on the study, a suitable cervical collar is suggested for the patients suffering from c-spine injury, which could be cus- tomized according to the patient’s requirement and enable the user to operate it themselves during the recovery sessions and eliminate the necessity of a therapist.

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