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Physical therapist plays an important role to help people to regain the social life from disease and physical handicap. However, they can obtain their skills only from their practical experiences. The physical therapist trainee can enrich is experience only from the clinical practical training and this opportunity is limited. Therefore, we have been developing the upper limb patient simulator, which...
This article, introduces a new haptic robot, wrist-RoboHab, for upper limb rehabilitation of post stroke, orthopedic and Parkinson patients., The robot is designed for hand movement therapy and could be used for both treatment and evaluation purposes in three operational states; forearm supination/pronation, wrist flexion/extension and ulnar/radial deviation. At first the mechanical design and control...
This paper presents the ROBIN (Rehabilitation Of Brain INjuries) multi-model system for whole-arm therapy retraining following a brain injury or a stroke. The design, control and integration of a new type of hybrid system based on a multi-robot implementation is described. The system is able to support multiple exercise design approaches, providing grasp and full upper limb movement over a large workspace...
The distinguishing features of active exoskeletons are the capability of guiding arm movement at the level of the full kinematic chain of the human arm, and training full 3D spatial movements. We have specifically developed a PD sliding mode control for upper limb rehabilitation with gain scheduling for providing "assistance as needed", according to the force capability of the patient, and...
We introduce a novel approach for proportional head control for robotic wheelchairs. An array of force sensors embedded into the headrest is used to monitor the pressure distribution changes due to the intentional head motions of the patient. The force signals are analysed and converted into fully proportional signals that control the wheelchair direction and speed. We developed a prototype interface...
This paper presents the development of a torque-based myoelectric impedance controller for an active-knee transfemoral prosthesis. An anthropomorphically inspired agonist-antagonist impedance controller studied in a myoelectric elbow prosthesis is adapted for the knee joint. To parameterize the controller, regression analysis was applied to a recently updated lower-extremity neuromuscular simulation...
This paper presents a vibrotactile sensory substitution system that could be used to deliver sensory feedback to transradial amputees wearing a myoelectric hand prosthesis. The novelty is an architecture that allows simultaneous variation of both amplitude and frequency using low-cost components and traditional techniques. The small dimension of the system allows to place it on different target points...
This paper presents an automated system for a rehabilitation robotic device that guides stroke patients through an upper-limb reaching task. The system uses a partially observable Markov decision process (POMDP) as its primary engine for decision-making. The POMDP allows the system to automatically modify exercise parameters to account for the specific needs and abilities of different individuals,...
This paper presents the novel “River” multimodal rehabilitation robotics scenario that includes video, audio and haptic modalities. Elements contributing to intrinsic motivation are carefully joined in the three modalities to increase motivation of the user. The user first needs to perform a motor action, then receives a cognitive challenge that is solved with adequate motor activity. Audio includes...
Walking on a split-belt treadmill, which has two belts that can be run at different speeds, has been shown to improve walking patterns post-stroke. However, these improvements are only temporarily retained once individuals transition to walking over ground. We hypothesize that longer-lasting effects would be observed if the training occurred during natural walking over ground, as opposed to on a treadmill...
A robot-driven gait orthosis which allows balance training during gait would further enhance the capabilities of robotic treadmill training in gait rehabilitation. In this paper, additional mass is attached to walking able-bodied subjects to simulate the effects of additional inertia and body weight support on the lateral balance task. The combination of additional inertia and body weight support...
This paper is the continuation of a work presented at ICORR 07, in which we discussed the possibility of improving eye-hand coordination in children diagnosed with this problem, using a robotic mapping from a haptic user interface to a virtual environment. Our goal is to develop, implement and refine a system that will assess and improve the eye-hand coordination and grip strength in children diagnosed...
The aim of this study is to assess the feasibility of an approach for generating velocity-dependent trajectories to train neurologically injured patients. The reference trajectories are constructed based on the gait patterns of subjects walking on a treadmill. By extracting key events (parameters) from these trajectories, the velocity dependency of the parameters is determined by regression analysis...
The goal of this study is to propose a methodology for evaluating recovery mechanisms in subacute and chronic post-stroke patients after a robot-aided upper-limb therapy, using a set of biomechanical parameters. Fifty-six post-stroke subjects, thirteen subacute and forty-three chronic patients participated in the study. A 2 dof robotic system, implementing an “assist-as-needed” control strategy, was...
We investigated dynamic optimization as a tool to improve functional electrical stimulation (FES) assisted sit to stand transfers of paraplegic subjects. The objective would be to find optimal strategy for voluntary trunk movement, which would minimize hip, knee and ankle torques and demand minimal upper limb participation during the motion. Motion of the knee and the ankle were constrained by electrical...
This paper reports on an ongoing research collaboration between the University of Padua and the University of California Irvine, on the use of continuous auditory-feedback in robot-assisted neurorehabilitation of post-stroke patients. This feedback modality is mostly underexploited in current robotic rehabilitation systems, that usually implement very basic auditory feedback interfaces. The results...
Measuring arm stiffness is of great interest for many disciplines from biomechanics to medicine especially because modulation of impedance represents one of the main mechanism underlying control of movement and interaction with external environment. Previous works have proposed different methods to identify multijoint hand stiffness by using planar or even tridimensional haptic devices, but the associated...
Untethered, powered orthotics require an actuation system with power supply and control, transmission line and actuator. Fluid power has unmatched force-to-weight and power-to-weight compared to electromechanical systems, but it is unclear if those same advantages hold for small systems in the 10 to 100 W range. A systems analysis approach suggests that a fluid power system will be lighter than an...
An exoskeleton has to be lightweight, compliant, yet powerful to fulfill the demanding task of walking. This imposes a great challenge for the actuator design. Electric motors, by far the most common actuator in robotic, orthotic, and prosthetic devices, cannot provide sufficiently high peak and average power and force/torque output, and they normally require high-ratio, heavy reducer to produce the...
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