Design and Development of a Smart Exercise Bike for Motor Rehabilitation in Individuals With Parkinson's Disease

Abstract

Recent studies in rehabilitation of Parkinson’s disease (PD) have shown that cycling on a tandem bike at a high pedaling rate can reduce the symptoms of the disease. In this research, a smart motorized bicycle has been designed and built for assisting Parkinson’s patients with exercise to improve motor function. The exercise bike can accurately control the rider’s experience at an accelerated pedaling rate while capturing real-time test data. Here, the design and development of the electronics and hardware as well as the software and control algorithms are presented. Two control algorithms have been developed for the bike; one that implements an inertia load (static mode) and one that implements a speed reference (dynamic mode). In static mode the bike operates as a regular exercise bike with programmable resistance (load) that captures and records the required signals such as heart rate, cadence and power. In dynamic mode the bike operates at a user-selected speed (cadence) with programmable variability in speed that has been shown to be essential to achieving the desired motor performance benefits for PD patients. In addition, the flexible and extensible design of the bike permits readily changing the control algorithm and incorporating additional I/O as needed to provide a wide range of riding experiences. Furthermore, the network-enabled controller provides remote access to bike data during a riding session.

Dynamic High-Cadence Cycling Improves Motor Symptoms in Parkinson’s Disease

“…Data from the controller box were downloaded and archived onto a laptop computer. Additional details on the design of the control program and the cycle can be found in the paper by Mohammadi Abdar ( 23 ).…”

BrainCycles: Experimental Setup for the Combined Measurement of Cortical and Subcortical Activity in Parkinson's Disease Patients during Cycling

“…One may also speculate that the special conditions of bicycling, e.g., continuous resistance and angular momentum of the pedals, may provide feedback that is substantially different from walking. Bicycling has also been recently promoted as a viable therapy for PD (Mohammadi-Abdar et al, 2016), with evidence emerging that it may stimulate improvements in motor control (Ridgel et al, 2009, 2015) and cognitive performance (Alberts et al, 2011; Ridgel et al, 2011), as well as reduce severity of tremor, bradykinesia (Ridgel et al, 2012) and of orthostatic hypotension (Ridgel et al, 2016). …”

Sensor Fusion and Smart Sensor in Sports and Biomedical Applications

“…To assist people with the rehabilitation of Parkinson’s disease, load control, and speed sensors can be used to instrument a bicycle, while its user can use sensors to monitor heart rate [145]. Storage systems and data transmission centralize the influx of signals and allow the data merger to parameterize the most appropriate exercises for the individual in question.…”