Doctoral Thesis: VELIS augmented: Integration of movement and cardio-respiratory analysis when...

This project will be conducted within the framework of the TIMC laboratory through three of its research teams (MESP, PRETA and SPM) and in conjunction with three startups from their respective work (Ebike, Etisens and MySmartmove). The doctoral student will also have to coordinate the work between these different partners.

The MESP team of the TIMC laboratory has developped a rehabilitation and educational program ofr health promotion, based on an intelligent electrical bicycle (VELIS). The VELIS allows electrical assistance depending on the patient's goal, on the basis of his pedaling rythm, power to produce or cardiac frequency. Thus the electric assistance can serve as an aid during the climb or, on the contrary, as a downhill brake in order to keep the desired objective as constant as possible. The data from the bike is also recorded continuously to allow a debriefing at the end of the release to personalize the next steps of the rehabilitation program and to educate the patient. These characteristics make VELIS a useful tool for the rehabilitation of patients in the natural environment. The VELIS platform has also been used in several clinical research projects on diverse pathological populations (fibromyalgia, obesity, cardio-respiratory insufficiencies) involving a total of more than two hundred patients and thousands of exits.
The main goal of this project is to enlarge the VELIS platform by means of other sensors issued form the laboratory.
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1. In partnership with the SPM team, the aim is to integrate an on-board device (based on inertial control units) for analyzing the movement of the cyclist's legs and trunk. This will allow on the one hand to be better able to prevent pain related to poor positioning of the cyclist (lumbar pain mainly) thanks to a personalized adjustment of the bike based on the analysis of the posture, and on the other hand to imagine a bike enslavement based on the kinematics of the legs on the crankset (which can for example be asymmetrical in order to compensate for limb differences or to less sollicitate a given limb.
2. In partnership with the PRETA team, which has designed a connected vest for functional cardio-respiratory monitoring, based on abdominal and thoracic inductive plethysmography and electrocardiographic recording (ECG), the idea is to allow a much more precise control and follow-up of patients in terms of measured cardio-respiratory parameters.

The secondary goal of this project, is to extract, from these new measuring devices, relevant combined indicators to improve patient management and satisfaction in VELIS-based rehabilitation and therapeutic education programmes. For this a clinical study will be conducted on population of obese patients, and the analysis of recorded data will allow the construction of posture indicators on the bike, symmetry of the pedaling kinematics and to define personalized effort indicators based on the new cardio-respiratory parameters.
The project will be conducted by the doctoral student according to the following overall schedule:
1. The first step (6 months) will allow an appropriation of the various devices and signals collected, and will aim to define the conditions for synchronized recording of data from the three devices. To do this, strong cooperation with health actors and patients will be necessary to define the different uses and andapt the visualisation to these needs.
2. The second step (12 months) will be to adapt/design the data processing algorithms from the new integrated devices in order to return relevant information to the patient and his medical supervision.
3. The third step (18 months) will allow a situational assessment of the tool in a clinical study of patients (mainly obese and fibromyalgic patients) and the definition, based on recorded data, synthetic indicators that can be used routinely on the VELIS platform in the natural environment. In the long term, the indicators will be intergared into a sofware.