APPLYING THE ATLIN PRINCIPLE
APPLYING THE ATLIN PRINCIPLE
When you use conventional training equipment you always have to remember to start by selecting a suitable level of resistance. This interactive training robot employs a dynamic resistance regulation that does not require manual adjustment.
The interactive Atlin Principle continuously adjusts the pedal resistance to equal the pressure applied by the patient. This makes the training robot very easy to operate = it requires no operation at all.
The normal version of the training robot simply does not have any control switches apart from the one that locks the pedals whilst the patient places his or her feet in the pedal straps and the unlock-button that releases the pedals and allows the patient to start using the training robot.
This level of simplicity has several advantages:
1) The patient makes the decisions.
With the interactive Atlin Principle you do not need to decide on how hard it has to be to press the pedals. The patient makes that decision during the training. The resistance can vary from light as a feather to rather heavy. For most patients the pedalling will start out easy, then turn slightly heavier and then return to easy. The patient is also able to press harder with one leg, thereby achieving more resistance, whilst the other leg presses softer against a softer resistance. The interactive Atlin Principle allows the patient to decide how hard he or she wants to press, when and with which leg.
2) The level of monotony is reduced.
Conventional training equipment usually leads to a feeling of monotony rather quickly because each pedal revolution is the same as the previous one. There is no flywheel or something similar that must be kept going.
3) Continuity for weak patients.
If weak patients using conventional training equipment start out too briskly, they soon become unable to continue and have to stop and wait before they continue their training. With the Atlin Principle, they do not have to stop but can simply save a bit of energy until they feel ready again.
This effect is particularly important for heart and lung patients who are able to train continuously with the Atlin Principle without experiencing the discomfort of having to stop in order to get the breathing back on track.
4) Reduced risk of injury.
When using conventional training equipment with a fixed level of resistance, there are many examples of too high resistance levels leading to patient injuries because the patients were tempted to press harder to overcome this resistance.
This is not likely to happen with the Atlin Principle because there is no fixed resistance to be tempted by.
5) The patient is able to utilise his or her resources much better.
When the patient – not the equipment or the staff members – is able to decide on how to do the training, the session will fit the individual person in a comfortable way. If the patient’s legs are not equally strong, they can be trained individually.
This individual adjustment takes into account the patient’s physical condition, strength, endurance, pain, constant or movement-related joint limitations, and similar factors.
6) This leads to an individually based training.
In order to obtain good training, it is particularly important for the weak patients that the training considers the situation of each individual. Standard training with standard equipment rarely offers the optimal solution, meaning that training is usually a task for the physiotherapists. It is, however, very strenuous to train bedridden patients which is why their training is often much too limited.
The training robot has been created to take over the most strenuous physiotherapy tasks. At a large demonstration and discussion event on the potential of the training robot at the hospital of Hillerød in Denmark, it was concluded that physiotherapists would be able to train quite a few more patients every day with this kind of robot than they would otherwise. It is also clear that the training robot has certain limitations compared to a physiotherapist; however, there is no denying that it makes up a very good aid when training the large, gravity-resisting muscles and joints in legs and the lower part of the body.
When training with the training robot feels like you are being treated by a physiotherapist, you will obtain an individually based training on your own terms and within your own limits, and the physiotherapists will be relieved from some of the most demanding work.