Capturing Motion,
Crafting Stories

As we all know, robots have played an increasingly important role in human life. However, we are more likely to see robots that run autonomously with programs or are controlled by humans, and less likely to see robots that purely assist the human body. The research team led by Fu Chenglong, associate professor of department of mechanical and energy engineering, south university of science and technology, focused on this direction and carried out several studies.

One of the team's projects, robotics-powered prosthetics, has designed a robotics-powered thigh prosthesis that includes ankle and knee joints and aims to reduce the metabolic cost of walking, weight-bearing walking, walking up and down stairs and standing up. Struggling with the difficulty of measuring the Angle and interarticular forces at key joints such as the hips, knees and ankles during complex movements, the team hopes to have a set of high-precision professional tools to help with the research, and optical motion-capture system, which are widely used in the field of biomechanics, is just what they need.

To better support the human-powered robots team's project, the motion-capture team installed 12 Mars 2H motion-capture cameras in a 13m-long, 7m wide and 3.5m high space, while also helping to customize professional steps and walkways for walking up and down stairs. Relying on the high compatibility of NOKOV optical 3D motion capture system, the 3D force plate, force measuring platform and surface emg data used for dynamic analysis are collected synchronously. While studying the kinematics data of multiple gait complex movements, the research team can steadily obtain professional biomechanical data such as three-dimensional forces, torques and EMG signals for more comprehensive analysis.

The project has won the good result of "the second place of the whole system lower limb prosthesis group" in the neuroprosthesis technology innovation competition sponsored by the rapid response team of national defense science and technology innovation of the central military commission (CMC), and will be supported by the scientific and technological commission of the CMC and the Shenzhen municipal commission of economy and information technology with a multi-million yuan research fund and industrial transformation.

In addition, the team also carried out research on walking assisted exoskeleton, inner penetrating flexible assisted exoskeleton to assist elderly walking, and labor-saving mechanism of carrying pole. NOKOV optical 3D motion capture system has realized efficient and high-precision data acquisition in each of the team's research, and also provided good after-sales technical support services.

Now, the department of mechanical and energy engineering, which is part of the team, has partnered with MIT to establish the center for mechanical engineering education and research, we believes that the NOKOV optical 3D motion-capture system will be of greater help to researchers at home and abroad in the future.