Rainbow Roller

Concept

Introduction

As a team composed of a gymnast and ultimate frisbee player, we both recognize the importance of effective muscle rolling and the lack of current tools to support it. The goal of the rainbow roller is to enable more effective muscle rolling by leading users through specific routines and giving them data analysis of how they are doing.

The roller has a gyroscope inside, which measures the range of angles the user is rolling through, and a pressure sensing conductive sheet (velostat) on the outside, which measure the amount of pressure the user is placing on the roller. An LED strip on the side shows different colors to guide users through a routine, and at the end displays a color to show how well they stuck to the routine. An mBed, also inside, is used to coordinate the different sensors and LED strip.

Baseline Goal

The proposed milestones will be used to guide this project.

1. Use gyroscope to accurately detect speed of movement.
2. Detect amount of pressure applied by user with pressure sensitive conductive velostat.
3. Relay amount pressure applied and speed of movement through programmable LED strips.

Reach Goal

These proposed goals will be used to guide further development, time permitting.

1. Compact packaging for ease of use.
2. Data collection and analysis.

Baseline Demo

For the baseline demo, we were able to get the gyroscope measuring angular momentum interfaced well with the LED strip. The pressure sensors were also interfaced with the entire system, but had a wide range of fluctuation in the values they read, introducing bugs into the overall system.

At this point, our pressure sensors were compactly connected to the muscle roller, and the electronics were somewhat contained inside. The LED strip stuck out to the side of the roller.

Reach Demo

For the reach demo, we were able to get the roller into a more compact design with the electronics entirely contained inside. The LED strip was rolled and attached at the edge of the roller. We drilled holes in the cap of the roller for a reset button and the USB wire to power the mBed and upload new code.

We messed around with the pressure sensors quite a bit and were able to get them working! Unfortunately they did not work very well during the demo itself, but they were working consistently just a few hours before. We found that what worked (temporarily) was taping wires to either side of them, overlapping in the middle, to help increase conductivity when pushed on.

We were unable to get serial communication working for data analysis, but did add a basic data analysis portion at the end of the rolling session. At the end, the LEDs turn red, yellow, or green, dependent on how many mistakes were sensed during the rolling session.

Public Demo

We were successfully able to integrate serial communication with data analysis in MATLAB in which we plotted the pressure applied vs time and degree of rolling movement vs time to allow patients and physicians to analyze rolling patterns from session to session. Due to mbed's inability to handle both the LED strip and the serial printing communication at the same time, collecting the data required running separate code from MATLAB so we were unable to integrate the data collection with the routine that guides patients through more effective stretching. Ultimately, we met our reach goals of compactly packaging the product and incorporating data analysis. Cheers to a great experience!