REU: Preventing Back Injuries in Nurses and other Health Care Personnel

搬运对护士和其他医护人员造成的伤害是一个非常严重和长期存在的问题。这项研究的目的是确定设计和控制辅助设备的基本原理，这些辅助设备要么由卫生保健人员佩戴，要么直接由卫生保健人员操作，目的是利用设备的机械强度来增强人体的体力，而佩戴者的智力则充当操纵设备的中央控制系统。在这项研究工作中，首先将研究患者抬起和转移所需的所有常见动作。为了满足本研究确定的可操作性要求，将为该设备设计几种体系结构。然后，执行器的设计和制造将本质上像希尔的人类手臂模型那样工作。将为该辅助装置制定自适应控制规则，以防止在存在人体动力学变化的情况下人为引起的不稳定。该设备中的控制算法还会将患者实际体重的缩小值作为反馈传输到护士的手臂上。假说是，当护士使用这些设备来操纵病人时，可以降低护士背部受伤的风险。

The problem of injuries to nurses and other health care workers that are caused by lifting is a very serious and longstanding one. The objective of this research is to determine the fundamentals for the design and control of assistive devices that are either worn or directly operated by health care personnel for the purpose of augmenting human physical strength with the device's mechanical strength, while the wearer's intellect acts as the central control system for manipulating the device. In this research work all common maneuvers needed for lift and transfer patients will be studied first. To meet the maneuverability requirements determined in this study, several architectures for the device will be designed. Then the actuators will be designed and built to behave inherently like Hill's model of the human arm. Adaptive control rules will be developed for this assist device which prevent human-induced instability in the presence of variations in the human dynamics. The control algorithm in the device also transfers to the nurse's arms, as feedback, a scaled-down value of the patient's actual weight. The hypothesis is that these devices, when used by nurses to maneuver patients, reduce the risk of back injuries in the nurses.