Good morning profs and fellow classmates, this is my fyp topic, mobility for the aged. Presentation 2.
My supervisor is Peer and my name is Douglas Lim.
First, I would like to do a recap on what was discussed on the previous presentation.
This is the design brief that I am working on for the past 12 weeks.
The Target Audiences that I am working on are group b and group c.
The reason behind is to prevent them from falling into group d which is wheelchair bound.
Zooming into group b and c, they could have multiple issues or conditions that can be prevented and improved.
Why are we trying so hard to get them moving?
By moving around, it helps to improve their conditions and preventing more diseases to strike.
Design features:
1. Hot and cold theory
Is to resolve swelling and soreness in their knee joints.
What is so special?
Plug in and flow the water.
2. Airbag concept
What is for?
Different levels of elevation to support the user. It grows to give you strength.
Design challenge:
A. An active system is required.
3. Docking system
What is it for?
For ease of mounting as compared to mounting in suspension. A reference point gives guidance to the user on where to mount on their body.
You sit down and mount the powered exoskeleton on.
Design challenge:
A. Sizing issues. Ergonomic.
4. Powered exoskeleton
A mobility aid to give you additional support to move your thigh forward.
An additional of lumbar support is provided to help the elderly strengthen his her back posture to prevent bent lumbar conditions.
Design challenges:
A. Sizing (making it modular, we measure the waist then we plug in the key components to the length)
5. The interactive control
A system control is provided to give guidance to the user.
A monitoring system for the physiotherapist on the mileage clocks in. To determine the health conditions of the user.
Design considerations:
A. Interact with it. Gives you a sense of control
B. Find data for the medical expert to gauge the health condition.
C. Setting control of your machine.
With that in mind, I would now put the facts on the table on the value of this project and why it matters to all of us?
This mobility project value increases after deep research. I wouldn’t say that ageing is scary, it’s the uncertainty that we are dealing with which makes us insecure when it comes. And to deal with it, it is about making things better for them, for our parents and eventually for us to be ready for it.
When we are dealing with this project, we thought we know a lot about elderly, so we tend to assume but when we go down deep into research, elderly have their aspirations, they want their freedom to move around they want to be by themselves but eventually it didn’t turn out that way because of different reasons and restrictions.
Therefore this project deals with what we are uncertain and builds on credible foundations and future views on it.
