Students of the Novosibirsk State Technical University NETI, residents of the SBI Garage have created a prototype of clothes with muscle toning for wheelchair users.
"The goal of our project is to help people whose spinal cord is damaged, for example, from a severe injury or from a certain disease, resulting in a person being paralyzed. In fact, bodies of people with disabilities are fully functioning, but the signal from the brain does not reach the lower limbs, and depending on the injuries, in some cases patients can recover themselves. One of these methods of rehabilitation is our smart clothes, which monitors, controls the patient's condition, gives a summary of the person's condition, allows you to draw conclusions, including collecting data for the attending physician and medical staff. Roughly speaking, we teach a person to move his muscles anew," said Konstantin Lebedev, one of the developers, a student of Aircraft Faculty NSTU NETI, a member of the Cyber Life team.
According to him, muscle toning is a method of rehabilitation, which is based on electrical muscle stimulation carried out by transmitting current with specified characteristics.
"A person whose nervous connection is broken cannot make his muscle contract, so we record his motives for this action with the help of electromyographic sensors built into the suit itself," Konstantin Lebedev explained.
During the development, the team also considered the convenience of using clothes by a person with disabilities: "It is important to understand that the usual clothes are not so comfortable for a person with disabilities. They affect even on a psychological level. Therefore, we made comfortable clothes for disabled people; they can put on these clothes by themselves without making unnecessary complicated movements. The kit includes a sweatshirt-bodysuit and compression stockings, which also monitor a person's temperature so that they understand what is happening to their body," added Lebedev.