ARC Knee Brace: Neoprene Knee Brace with Active Control Using Wearable Sensors †

Remote monitoring of a patient’s physical rehabilitation process after knee surgery is crucial, especially in instances such as pandemics, where patients may not be able to acquire ongoing postoperative care owing to the precautions implemented. Wearable technology can be used to track a patient’s development and ensure that they follow rehabilitation guidelines. An active rotation control (ARC) knee brace was developed to guide and facilitate physical therapy movements of patients with knee injuries in an actively controlled manner. The system can trigger a visual feedback mechanism when the subject performs various knee postures. Through the Internet, caregivers could obtain patients’ overall knee-related rehabilitation metrics. The ARC knee brace employs inertial motion tracking technology which is based on low-cost inertial sensors and data processing algorithms to capture user’s knee posture in real-time during rehabilitation process. The inertial measurement units (IMUs) containing a combination of accelerometer and gyroscope are used as motion sensors to measure accelerations and rotational rates of knee. The sensors track data include acceleration, rotation, and temperature. The processing system calculates various metrics from the posture of knee.