BETER REHAB

Last updated on Jan 3, 2022

You can find more details and progres about this project on its dedicated website!

Background

An increasing amount of people, especially elderly ones, face mobility problems often due to a stroke or some kind of accident. To increase their quality of life and reduce their dependence on others, physical rehabilitation is necessary. The aim of the rehabilitation is to enable the people to re-learn how to use their limbs and strengthen the affected muscles. The traditional way of performing rehabilitation is by helping the patients pefrorm repetitive motions. A physiotherapist is monitoring their effort and progress and adjusts the task and the motion respectively. However, due to the fact that different patients have different mobility problems, the pre-defined repetitive motions do not constitute an optimal rehabilitation scheme for everyone. In other words, the rehabilitation is not always personalised.

BETER REHAB

Our proposal is about designing a Biomecanically Enabled roboTic controllER for REstoring Human ABility (BETER REHAB). The idea is to use a robotic arm to improve the rehabilitation process of a patient. The robotic arm will be attached on the arm of the patient and will firstly detect the intention of motion of the patient. Based on this intention, it will calculate a trajectory of motion and will apply the appropriate force along that trajectory. This way, the patient will be free to perform any type of motion, not just the predefined ones, and receive the appropriate assistance from the robotic arm.

To be able to do this, the robotic controller needs to be aware of the biomechanics of the arm. Therefore a musculoskeletal model of the upper arm will be included in the feedback loop of the controller of the robot. To better estimate and understand the intention of motion of the patient, we will simultaneously measure the muscle activation of the upper arm and the current position of the arm segments. Finally, the idea is to apply enforced learning techniques to allow calibration of the system for each patient individually.

UEFISCDI

UEFISCDI is a public institution under the Ministry of Education and asures both the conducting of studies as well as facilitates the process of distributing the funds allocated from the state budget for research targeted towards universities. Is also coordinates, in administrative terms, the programs and sub-programs of the National Plan for Research, Development and Innovation. As a research funding agency, similar to prestigious international agencies, it organizes competitions and subsequently monitors the implementation of projects accepted for financing. Through the NP III programs that is coordinates, it manages about 22% of government funding for research, development and innovation.

Research Beter-Rehab Biomechanics Robotics
Associate Professor on Robotics and Biomechanics

Posts

BETER REHAB End

As you might have noticed, I have been a bit silent for more than a year now. In case you were wondering, I am fine, just that life became quite busy this last year. I will try to update this blog with the most important news since last year not necessarily in the order that they happened.

One of the things that kept me mostly busy this period was the BETER REHAB project. The project was about robotic rehabilitation using a robot manipulator based on the intention of the patient. Well, the project was supposed to end in April 2020, but due to the CoVID-19 pandemic, the end was postponed until June 2020. This was necessary to perform the final measurements for the project, which was impossible to do during the lock-down period of March and April.

Last updated on Dec 2, 2020 2 min read Rehab

Publications

Predicting Intention of Motion During Rehabilitation Tasks of the Upper-Extremity

Rehabilitation promoting “assistance-as-needed” is considered a promising scheme of active rehabilitation, since it can …
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