Prototyping Tool using an Embedded Digital Twin for Assistive Technology Reconfiguration

Abstract

To achieve autonomy in their daily lives, people with a disability need assistive devices. Still, according to Denormandie and Chevalier (2020), 30 to 40% of these are discarded in the first year of use. One reason is the lack of adaptation; indeed, current models of handicap demonstrate how much a disability situation can evolve according to both environmental and personal factors together with time. To overcome this situation and develop more accessible assistive technologies, we propose to integrate reconfiguration capabilities in a 3 steps usage adaptation framework. Customisation involves the user in the design process and enhances the appropriation of assistive aids, configuration allows the adaption of mechanical, hardware or software capabilities of the assistive technology to the individual’s current abilities, and reconfiguration updates those capabilities following the changes in the person’s disability situation. This paper presents a complete approach, from the formalism to the first implementation, to develop a versatile framework. Configuration is achieved using a distributed electronic structure, based on two types of nodes, controller and operative nodes. The control node uses a dedicated communication protocol to exchange messages with operative nodes. The operative nodes manage various sensors and actuators that behave according to the software configuration. This electronic toolkit used with 3D design tools allows the co-design and customisation of mechatronic prototypes of the AT. Reconfiguration is orchestrated by an Embedded Digital Twin (EDT), integrated into the main controller, which detects situations in which the configuration needs to be updated. Helped by the distributed hardware, it dynamically reconfigures each node to match the targeted configuration.