Rehabilitation Robotics
Wednesday, April 11, 9:00-10:30, Ballroom B, University Hotel Minneapolis

Organizer: Just Herder, Delft University of Technology

"Robotic Rehabilitation – market pull or industry push?"
Stefan Bircher, PhD, Executive Vice President, Hocoma Inc.

"Design and Development of an Ankle Rehabilitation Robot (ARBOT): From Research to Product Development"
Jody A. Saglia, N.G. Tsagarakis, J.S. Dai, and D.G. Caldwell, Italian Institute of Technology

"Rehabilitation Robots as Alternative Treatment of Tremor"
Eduardo Rocon and J.L. Pons, Bioengineering Group, CSIC

"Rehabilitation Using FES to Induce Muscle Co-Contraction"
Paola Jaramillo, PhD Candidate, Mechanical Engineering, Virginia Tech

Session Abstract:

Rehabilitation robotics is gaining importance in the treatment of neuro-physical disorders that are often age related, such as stroke. Assistive robotics and therapy robotics are well established while diagnostic robotics receives increasing attention from the research community. So far, bringing products to the martke turns out difficult, considering the research effort spent on the topic. This session seeks to investigate market potential and marketing obstacles for rehabilitation robotic devices. To this end, leading speakers from industry and academia present their vision on the topic based on illustrative examples.

Session Organizer Bio:

Just Herder, Delft University of Technology
Just Herder is part-time full professor at the University of Twente and part-time associate professor at Delft University of Technology. He has published over 100 full papers in international peer-reviewed journals and conferences and has received several international awards. He is or has been board member of five international conferences, is associate editor in three international journals, and Editor-in-Chief in another one. Four start-up companies have emerged from his research and he holds over a dozen international patents in different areas of mechanism design.

Speaker Bios:

Stefan Bircher, PhD, Executive Vice President, Hocoma Inc.
Stefan Bircher has a PhD in Physiology and Rehabilitation Sciences from the German Sports University, Cologne, Germany. As former deputy head of the clinical sports therapy department at the Rehabilitation Center Valens (Switzerland) and his research activities at the Swiss Paraplegic Center Nottwil and the Health Sciences Division at the University of South Australia he acquired a broad experience in various healthcare related areas. He joined Hocoma seven years ago as head of clinical applications and product manager and relocated in 2010 to the greater Boston area to run Hocoma's US subsidiary.

Jody A. Saglia, Italian Institute of Technology
Jody Saglia received his Bachelor's Degree in Automation Engineering and Master's Degree in Mechatronics Engineering at Polytechnic of Turin in 2004 and 2007 respectively. During the master degree he studied one year in Finland at Helsinki University of Technology (HUT), working on the design and control of mobile robots. He has been a researcher at King's College since 2006 and received his PhD degree in 2010. He has also been a research fellow at the Italian Institute of Technology since 2007. Currently he is a Postdoc researcher in the Department of Advanced Robotics in IIT, working on the design and control of rehabilitation robots for the lower limb and on the development of the compliant humanoid platform cCub which is part of the European Project AMARSi. His research interests are mechanisms design, rehabilitation robotics, mechatronic design, actuation systems and human-robot interaction.

Eduardo Rocon, Bioengineering Group, CSIC
Eduardo Rocon received a PhD degree in 2006 from the Universidad Politécnica de Madrid. From 1999 through 2000 he was research associate at Laboratorio de Automação Inteligente (LAI) at UFES. He held a CNPq scholarship at UFES from 1999 through 2000. He is current research assistant at the Bioengineering group in the Insituto de Automática Industrial (IAI), a division of Spanish National Council for Science Research (CSIC). His research interests include rehabilitation robotics, biomechanics, adaptive signal processing, and human machine interaction.

Paola Jaramillo, PhD Candidate, Mechanical Engineering, Virginia Tech
Paola Jaramillo is currently pursuing her doctoral studies in mechanical engineering at Virginia Tech. Her research focuses on muscle atrophy. Experimental and theoretical analysis are performed by treating the muscle as a nonlinear system. She is experienced on theoretical engineering research regarding nanomaterials through finite element modeling and molecular simulation analysis. Her current research focuses on implementation of electrical stimulation as treatment for muscle atrophy concerning the vocal folds, and on the development of a medical microneedle device to electrically stimulate the voice box.

Presentation Abstracts:

"Robotic Rehabilitation – market pull or industry push?"
Rehabilitation Robotics is a highly promising field, whose application has shown benefit in several disabling neurological illnesses, particularly in stroke, spinal cord injury, multiple sclerosis, and cerebral palsy. Beside the positive clinical outcomes, the application of robotics allows a more efficient therapy, reduces the strain on therapists and has proven to be financially feasible. This presentation provides an overview about current achievements of robotics in neurorehabilitation despite the initial hurdles, and outlines the most promising future developments.

"Design and Development of an Ankle Rehabilitation Robot (ARBOT): From Research to Product Development"
The aim of this study was to design and develop a high performance Ankle Rehabilitation Robot (ARBOT) that can be used as an advanced tool to perform most of the rehabilitation exercises foreseen by standard rehabilitation protocols. For this purpose, a 2-dof (degrees of freedom), redundantly actuated parallel mechanism with a rigid central strut had been chosen. Based on the literature of biomechanical modeling of the human ankle and its rehabilitation, design specifications were derived and the optimal mechanical design of the robot was carried out. Part of the study, consisted also in designing suitable control algorithms for diagnostic, training and rehabilitation of the ankle in presence of musculoskeletal injuries. From a series of prototypes built to prove the concept, a preliminary industrialization of the robotic system has been carried out in collaboration with a R&D company. The final prototype is undergoing clinical evaluation in local hospitals and market potential for this technology is under investigation.

"Rehabilitation Robots as Alternative Treatment of Tremor"
Tremor is the most common movement disorder and strongly increases in incidence and prevalence with ageing. Although not life threatening, upper limb tremors hamper independent life of 65% of those suffering from them, greatly impacting on their quality of life. Current treatments of tremor include drugs and surgery. However, tremor is not effectively managed in 25 % of patients. Therefore, further research and new therapeutic options are required for an effective management of pathological tremor. This paper introduces some rehabilitation robots developed for tremor suppression based on biomechanical loading, their evaluation and the identification of their limitations. At the end, authors aim to provide a view of the potential of this novel approach for tremor management and the plans for commercialization.

"Rehabilitation Using FES to Induce Muscle Co-Contraction"
Functional Electrical Stimulation (FES) is a neuroprothesis technique used to restore motor function of individuals with spinal cord injury. The principle of FES is to use surface or implantable electrodes to generate current pulses in motoneurons. Induced contraction of these muscles facilitates corresponding joint movement. Our research implements a closed-loop system to control the trajectory of a muscle/mass/spring system to mimic the dynamics of agonist/antagonist muscle co-contraction in vitro. Therefore, sinusoidal, square and ramp trajectories are imposed in the system, which regulate muscle contractions when using pulse width modulation stimulation with variable duty cycle and constant frequency of 100 Hz.