Evaluation of Functional Electrical Stimulation to Assist Cycling in Four Adolescents with Spastic Cerebral Palsy

Figure 1

Tricycle components and participant set-up for FES-assisted cycling study [24]. The tricycle-based system is instrumented with a torque sensor and shaft encoder to allow for collection of torque, crank position and cadence, and consequentially the calculation of instantaneous power output, during the cycling session. The stimulator provides surface stimulation to bilateral quadriceps. The auxiliary hub motor was used for subjects 3 and 4 (please see text for details). A laptop computer is used for data acquisition, control of the stimulation timing, and control of the hub motor and to provide visual feedback on cycling performance to the cyclist.