Design and Validity of a Smart Healthcare and Control System for Electric Bikes.

This paper presents the development of an electronic system that converts an electrically assisted bicycle into an intelligent health monitoring system, allowing people who are not athletic or who have a history of health issues to progressively start the physical activity by following a medical protocol (e.g., max heart rate and power output, training time). The developed system aims to monitor the health state of the rider, analyze data in real-time, and provide electric assistance, thus diminishing muscular exertion. Furthermore, such a system can recover the same physiological data used in medical centers and program it into the e-bike to track the patient's health. System validation is conducted by replicating a standard medical protocol used in physiotherapy centers and hospitals, typically conducted in indoor conditions. However, the presented work differentiates itself by implementing this protocol in outdoor environments, which is impossible with the equipment used in medical centers. The experimental results show that the developed electronic prototypes and the algorithm effectively monitored the subject's physiological condition. Moreover, when necessary, the system can change the training load and help the subject remain in their prescribed cardiac zone. This system allows whoever needs to follow a rehabilitation program to do so not only in their physician's office, but whenever they want, including while commuting.

Smart Electrically Assisted Bicycles as Health Monitoring Systems: A Review.

This paper aims to provide a review of the electrically assisted bicycles (also known as e-bikes) used for recovery of the rider's physical and physiological information, monitoring of their health state, and adjusting the "medical" assistance accordingly. E-bikes have proven to be an excellent way to do physical activity while commuting, thus improving the user's health and reducing air pollutant emissions. Such devices can also be seen as the first step to help unhealthy sedentary people to start exercising with reduced strain. Based on this analysis, the need to have e-bikes with artificial intelligence (AI) systems that recover and processe a large amount of data is discussed in depth. The Preferred Reporting Items for Systematic Reviews and Meta-Analyses guidelines were used to complete the relevant papers' search and selection in this systematic review.

Caveats and Recommendations to Assess the Validity and Reliability of Cycling Power Meters: A Systematic Scoping Review.

A large number of power meters have become commercially available during the last decades to provide power output (PO) measurement. Some of these power meters were evaluated for validity in the literature. This study aimed to perform a review of the available literature on the validity of cycling power meters. PubMed, SPORTDiscus, and Google Scholar have been explored with PRISMA methodology. A total of 74 studies have been extracted for the reviewing process. Validity is a general quality of the measurement determined by the assessment of different metrological properties: Accuracy, sensitivity, repeatability, reproducibility, and robustness. Accuracy was most often studied from the metrological property (74 studies). Reproducibility was the second most studied (40 studies) property. Finally, repeatability, sensitivity, and robustness were considerably less studied with only 7, 5, and 5 studies, respectively. The SRM power meter is the most used as a gold standard in the studies. Moreover, the number of participants was very different among them, from 0 (when using a calibration rig) to 56 participants. The PO tested was up to 1700 W, whereas the pedalling cadence ranged between 40 and 180 rpm, including submaximal and maximal exercises. Other exercise conditions were tested, such as torque, position, temperature, and vibrations. This review provides some caveats and recommendations when testing the validity of a cycling power meter, including all of the metrological properties (accuracy, sensitivity, repeatability, reproducibility, and robustness) and some exercise conditions (PO range, sprint, pedalling cadence, torque, position, participant, temperature, vibration, and field test).

Toward Smart Soil Sensing in v4.0 Agriculture: A New Single-Shape Sensor for Capacitive Moisture and Salinity Measurements.

Modern agriculture imposes the need for better knowledge of the soil moisture content to rationalize the amount of water needed to irrigate farmlands. In this context, since current technological solutions do not correspond to the cost or use criteria, this paper presents a design for a new original capacitive bi-functional sensor to measure soil moisture and salinity. In this paper, we outline the design stages from simulation to finished elements of the optimal design to deployment in the fields, considering the mechanical integration constraints necessary for industrialization. The measurement electronics were developed based on the sensor's electric model to obtain a double measurement. An on-site (field lot) measurement program was then carried out to validate the system's good performance in real-time. Finally, this performance was matched with that of leading commercially available sensors on the market. This work demonstrates that, after deployment of the sensors, the overall system makes it possible to obtain a precise image of cultivated soil's hydric condition, with the best response time.

Influence of standing position on mechanical and energy costs in uphill cycling.

This study was designed to examine the influence of standing position (vs. seated) during uphill cycling on both mechanical cost (MC) and energy cost (EC) in elite cyclists. For the study, thirteen elite cyclists (VO2max: 71.4 ±â€¯8.0 ml·min-1·kg-1) performed, in a randomised order, three sets of exercises. Each set comprised 2 min of exercise, alternating every 30 s between seated and standing postures, using different slopes and intensity levels on a motorised treadmill. MC was calculated from the measurement of power output and speed, whereas EC was calculated from the measurement of oxygen consumption and speed. MC was significantly higher (+4.3%, p < 0.001) in standing position compared to seated position when all slopes and intensities were considered. However, EC was not significantly affected by the change in position. The standing position also induced a significant increase in rolling resistance power (p < 0.001), rolling resistance coefficient (p < 0.001) and lateral sways (p < 0.001). The significant increase in MC observed in standing position was due to a higher rolling resistance induced by bicycle sways and a shift forward of the centre of mass compared to seated position. This result should lead bicycle tire manufacturers to reduce the increase in rolling resistance between the two positions. Considering the relationship observed between the MC and bicycle sways, cyclists would be well advised to decrease the bicycle sways in order to reduce the MC of locomotion.

An Instrumented Glove to Assess Manual Dexterity in Simulation-Based Neurosurgical Education.

The traditional neurosurgical apprenticeship scheme includes the assessment of trainee's manual skills carried out by experienced surgeons. However, the introduction of surgical simulation technology presents a new paradigm where residents can refine surgical techniques on a simulator before putting them into practice in real patients. Unfortunately, in this new scheme, an experienced surgeon will not always be available to evaluate trainee's performance. For this reason, it is necessary to develop automatic mechanisms to estimate metrics for assessing manual dexterity in a quantitative way. Authors have proposed some hardware-software approaches to evaluate manual dexterity on surgical simulators. This paper presents IGlove, a wearable device that uses inertial sensors embedded on an elastic glove to capture hand movements. Metrics to assess manual dexterity are estimated from sensors signals using data processing and information analysis algorithms. It has been designed to be used with a neurosurgical simulator called Daubara NS Trainer, but can be easily adapted to another benchtop- and manikin-based medical simulators. The system was tested with a sample of 14 volunteers who performed a test that was designed to simultaneously evaluate their fine motor skills and the IGlove's functionalities. Metrics obtained by each of the participants are presented as results in this work; it is also shown how these metrics are used to automatically evaluate the level of manual dexterity of each volunteer.

Validity, Sensitivity, Reproducibility, and Robustness of the PowerTap, Stages, and Garmin Vector Power Meters in Comparison With the SRM Device.

A large number of power meters have been produced on the market for nearly 20 y according to user requirements. PURPOSE: To determine the validity, sensitivity, reproducibility, and robustness of the PowerTap (PWT), Stages (STG), and Garmin Vector (VCT) power meters in comparison with the SRM device. METHODS: A national-level male competitive cyclist completed 3 laboratory cycling tests: a submaximal incremental test, a submaximal 30-min continuous test, and a sprint test. Two additional tests were performed, the first on vibration exposures in the laboratory and the second in the field. RESULTS: The VCT provided a significantly lower 5-s power output (PO) during the sprint test with a low gear ratio than the SRM did (-36.9%). The STG PO was significantly lower than the SRM PO in the heavy-exercise-intensity zone (zone 2, -5.1%) and the low part of the severe-intensity zone (zone 3, -4.9%). The VCT PO was significantly lower than the SRM PO only in zone 2 (-4.5%). The STG PO was significantly lower in standing position than in the seated position (-4.4%). The reproducibility of the PWT, STG, and VCT was similar to that of the SRM system. The STG and VCT PO were significantly decreased from a vibration frequency of 48 Hz and 52 Hz, respectively. CONCLUSIONS: The PWT, STG, and VCT systems appear to be reproducible, but the validity, sensitivity, and robustness of the STG and VCT systems should be treated with some caution according to the conditions of measurement.

ISIFC - dual Biomedical Engineering School.

The Superior Institute for Biomedical Engineering (ISIFC), created in 2001, is part of the Franche-Comté University and is accredited by the French Ministry of National Education. Its originality lies in its innovative course of studies, which trains engineers in the scientific and medical fields to get both competencies. The Institute therefore collaborates with the University Hospital Centre of Besançon (CHU), biomedical companies and National Research Centres (CNRS and INSERM). The dual expertise trainees will have acquired at the end of their 3 years course covers medical and biological skills, scientific and Technical expertises. ISIFC engineers answer to manufacturer needs for skilled scientific and technical staff in instrumentation and techniques adapted to diagnosis, therapeutics and medical control, as well as the needs of potential users for biomedical devices, whether they are doctors, hospital staff, patients, laboratories, etc... Both the skills and the knowledge acquired by an ISIFC engineer will enable him/her to fulfil functions of study, research and development in the industrial sector.

Virtual firm as a role-playing tool for biomedical education.

The paper describes design of a role-playing tool based on the experience of the practice firm which allows participants to obtain relevant and practical on-the-job experience. The students played the roles of the employees and the applicants for vacant positions at the virtual firm - a small business specialized in biomedical sector - founded to design the demonstration vehicle for a biomedical device. We found that this innovative concept may be used to improve the young engineers performance and to facilitate their post-graduate integration.