Vehicle technology development drives economic development but also causes severe mobile pollution sources. Eco-driving is an effective driving strategy for solving air pollution and achieving driving safety. The on-board diagnostics II (OBD-II) module is a common monitoring tool used to acquire sensing data from in-vehicle electronic control units. However, different vehicle models use different controller area network (CAN) standards, resulting in communication difficulties; however, relevant literature has not discussed compatibility problems. The present study researched and developed the universal OBD-II module, adopted deep learning methods to evaluate fuel consumption, and proposed an intuitive driving graphic user interface design. In addition to using the universal module to obtain data on different CAN standards, this study used deep learning methods to analyze the fuel consumption of three vehicles of different brands on various road conditions. The accuracy was over 96%, thus validating the practicability of the developed system. This system will greatly benefit future applications that employ OBD-II to collect various types of driving data from different car models. For example, it can be implemented for achieving eco-driving in bus driver training. The developed system outperforms those proposed by previous research regarding its completeness and universality.

This study presents a noncontact electrocardiogram (ECG) measurement system to replace conventional ECG electrode pads during ECG measurement. The proposed noncontact electrode design comprises a surface guard ring, the optimal input resistance, a ground guard ring, and an optimal voltage divider feedback. The surface and ground guard rings are used to reduce environmental noise. The optimal input resistor mitigates distortion caused by the input bias current, and the optimal voltage divider feedback increases the gain. Simulated gain analysis was subsequently performed to determine the most suitable parameters for the design, and the system was combined with a capacitive driven right leg circuit to reduce common-mode interference. The present study simulated actual environments in which interference is present in capacitive ECG signal measurement. Both in the case of environmental interference and motion artifact interference, relative to capacitive ECG electrodes, the proposed electrodes measured ECG signals with greater stability. In terms of R–R intervals, the measured ECG signals exhibited a 98.6% similarity to ECGs measured using contact ECG systems. The proposed noncontact ECG measurement system based on capacitive sensing is applicable for use in everyday life.

This paper presents a lower extremity exoskeleton as a rehabilitation tool that involves electronics, biomedicine and mechanism design. Using the rehabilitation tool, the paralyzed lower limb muscles and impaired neurons of a stroke patient can be well revitalized during repeated stand-to-sit-to-stand movements. The body of an exoskeleton user can be well stabilized using a zero-torque theory. As compared with a “without” exoskeleton counterpart, an average of 66.98% reduction was observed in the RMS value of electromyography signals across the vastus intermedius muscle among a group of 5 healthy subjects with the exoskeleton (p <;.05), and a 47.248% reduction in the case of a female with an impaired lower limb. Ideally, the exoskeleton was designed to make a disabled user move in the same way as a healthy one, and the sit-to-stand-to-sit movement pattern of the female was improved, as evidenced by joint angle curves captured using a Kinect. Hence, the exoskeleton serves as an effective auxiliary sit-to-stand-to-sit tool not only for the elderly but also for those with mild lower limb motor impairment.

Currently, many ischemic stroke patients worldwide suffer from physical and mental impairments, and thus have a low quality of life. However, although rehabilitation is acknowledged as an effective way to recover patients’ health, there does not exist yet an adaptive training platform for animal tests so far. For this sake, this paper aims to develop an adaptive escalator (AE) for rehabilitation of rats with cerebral ischemia. Rats were observed to climb upward spontaneously, and a motor-driven escalator, equipped with a position detection feature and an acceleration/deceleration mechanism, was constructed accordingly as an adaptive training platform. The rehabilitation performance was subsequently rated using an incline test, a rotarod test, the infarction volume, the lesion volume, the number of MAP2 positive cells and the level of cortisol. This paper is presented in 3 parts as follows. Part 1 refers to the escalator mechanism design, part 2 describes the adaptive ladder-climbing rehabilitation mechanism, and part 3 discusses the validation of an ischemic stroke model. As it turned out, a rehabilitated group using this training platform, designated as the AE group, significantly outperformed a control counterpart in terms of a rotarod test. After the sacrifice of the rats, the AE group gave an average infarction volume of (34.36 ± 3.8)%, while the control group gave (66.41 ± 3.1)%, validating the outperformance of the escalator-based rehabilitation platform in a sense. An obvious difference between the presented training platform and conventional counterparts is the platform mechanism, and for the first time in the literature rats can be well and voluntarily rehabilitated at full capacity using an adaptive escalator. Taking into account the physical diversity among rats, the training strength provided was made adaptive as a reliable way to eliminate workout or secondary injury. Accordingly, more convincing arguments can be made using this mental stress-free training platform.

This paper aims to develop a position tracking algorithm by which a rat in a radial arm maze can be accurately located in real time. An infrared (IR) night-vision camera was hung above the maze to capture IR images of the rat. The IR images were binarized and then duplicated for subsequent intersection and opening operations. Due to simple operations and a high robustness against the noise spots formed by the droppings of the rat, it took just minutes to process more than 9000 frames, and an accuracy above 99% was reached as well. The maze was intruded by an experimenter to further test the robustness, and the accuracy slightly fell to 98%. For comparison purposes, the same experiments were carried out using a pre-trained YOLO v2 model. The YOLO counterpart gave an accuracy beyond 97% in the absence and in the presence of the intruder. In other words, this work slightly outperformed the YOLO counterpart in terms of the accuracy in both cases, which indicates the robustness of this work. However, it took the YOLO counterpart an hour or so to locate a rat contained in the frames, which highlights the contribution of this work.

Today’s commercial forced exercise platforms had been validated not as a well-designed rehabilitation environment for rats with a stroke, for the reason that rat with a stroke cannot take exercise at a constant intensity for a long period of time. In light of this, this work presented an adaptive, fall-free ischemic stroke rehabilitation mechanism in an animal model, which was implemented in an infrared-sensing adaptive feedback control running wheel (IAFCRW) platform. Consequently, rats with a stroke can be safely rehabilitated all the time, and particularly at full capacity for approximately one third of a training duration, in a completely fall-free environment according to individual physical differences by repeated use of an acceleration/deceleration mechanism. The performance of this platform was assessed using an animal ischemic stroke model. The IAFCRW therapy regimen was validated to outperform a treadmill and a conventional running wheel counterpart with respect to the reduction in the neurobehavioral deficits caused by middle cerebral artery occlusion (MCAo). IAFCRW is the first adaptive forced exercise training platform short of electrical stimulation-assistance in the literature, and ischemic stroke rats benefit more in terms of the behavioral tests run at the end of a 3-week rehabilitation program after a stroke thereby.