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Current Research Trends in Rehabilitation and Assistive Robotic Systems| old_uid | 9211 |
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| title | Current Research Trends in Rehabilitation and Assistive Robotic Systems |
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| start_date | 2010/11/03 |
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| schedule | 14h |
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| online | no |
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| summary | Biomedical Robotics is gaining an increasing popularity worldwide. Advanced robotic systems for assisted diagnosis and minimally-invasive surgery are now colonizing modern hospitals, showing an exponential growth in the last couple of years. The next step in the development of biomedical robotics will be the massive diffusion of Rehabilitation Robots, that is expected in the coming years. Robotics technology can
enable disruptive, innovative therapeutic protocols fully based on the active role of the patient and on assist- as-needed strategies. This seminar will discuss the main current research trends in the field of rehabilitation robotics, with a specific emphasis on a couple of main areas and a few case studies related to ongoing research projects carried out at the Laboratory of Biomedical Robotics and Biomicrosystems (Campus Bio-
Medico University, Roma, Italy), such as:
1. Impact of rehabilitation robots on clinical therapeutic protocols and assessment scales. Early results of a multicentre US-Italy study on the order-effect of upper limb proximal Vs distal motor therapy will be shortly presented, along with a proposal for a set of robot-based, quantitative indicators for patient’s assessment. Application of robotics to tele-rehabilitation will be also briefly discussed, with reference to the
novel MOTUSII platform for home-based rehabilitation;
2. Robotic tools for understanding motor control, motor learning and motor recovery. Rehabilitation robots directly derive from prototypes used for basic studies in neuroscience. The role of robotics technology in providing further understanding on how the brain works, learns and recovers motor tasks will be briefly reviewed, and the potential for generating new translational outcome for short-term innovation in
robot-based rehabilitation will be outlined;
3. Structurally embodied intelligence for the design of wearable rehabilitation robots. How far wearable robotics systems could go in adopting non-anthropomorphic morphologies so to improve performance, ergonomics and efficiency of the overall system? What kind of design methodologies and computer-assisted design tools do we miss for tackling these challenges? Some answers to this important research questions
will be provided with a direct reference to the case-study of the FET\EVRYON ongoing project (www.evryon.eu).
The final part of the seminar will focus on assistive robotics, and specifically on highly dexterous prosthetic devices directly interfaced to the human nervous system. Current limitations of prosthetic devices will be shortly analysed and the role of brain-machine interfaces, as one of the key technologies for overcoming such limitations will be presented. The LIFEHAND case-study, i.e. the implant of tf-LIFE4 neural
multielectrode interfaces on one human amputee for bidirectional control of a biomechatronic hand prosthesis (recently carried out at the Campus Bio-Medico Research Policlinic) will be presented and shortly discussed. |
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| responsibles | <not specified> |
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