The paper is on the control of a robotic arm actuated by a pneumatic artificial muscle (PAM) system. A conventional proportional-integral-derivative (PID) controller with active force control (AFC) is employed to control the robot arm assigned to operate a prescribed task. Simulation results show the effectiveness of the proposed control strategy compared to the PID control only scheme. The res...

BACKGROUND There is some debate about the proper site and arm position and the direction of the needle for the performance of ultrasound guided infraclavicular block. METHODS Using ultrasound, we compared the ease and success rate of a medial or a lateral approach to the brachial plexus for performing infraclavicular block in two groups of patients (n=202). The proximity of the needle to the ...

Artery-to-muscle (A-M) onset time for five neuromuscular blocking agents was studied in 50 female patients under light endotracheal anaesthesia. Circulation to the right arm was occluded by a tourniquet and released 1 min after the injection i.v. into the left arm of a myoneural blocking drug. Muscle twitches were recorded in the right hand after stimulation of the ulnar nerve (1 Hz). After rel...

To the Editor:—Recently, Byas-Smith et al. reported that tourniquet constriction expands and exacerbates pain during intradermal injection of capsaicin in humans. The underlying mechanism was unclear. It is suggested herein that excitation of paravascular nociceptors is involved in expansion of pain. Capsaicin has been shown to evoke pain from skin, muscle, and paravascular tissue, but not from...

Secondary arm lymphoedema is a chronic and distressing condition which affects a significant number of women who undergo breast cancer treatment. A number of health professional and patient instigated conservative therapies have been developed to help with this condition, but their comparative benefits are not clearly known. This systematic review undertook a broad investigation of commonly ins...

This paper deals with the dynamics and control of a two degree of freedom robot arm actuated by pneumatic artificial muscles (PAMs). The high power-weight ratio of PAMs justifies their use as actuators in robotics. To achieve trajectory tracking performance, controllers are constructed based on a dynamic model of the robot arm. Due to the high non-linear dynamics of the robotic system, fuzzy co...