Partners involved: UNIFI, UNIPI, UNISI, SSSA, IUVO, Qbrobotics, WEART, Wearable Robotics
Coordinator: Prof. Matteo Bianchi (UNIPI)
Outline: This subproject focuses on technologies for restoring human sensorimotor functions, allowing disabled people to regain the capability of interacting with their surroundings thanks to robotic devices and wearable sensorimotor interfaces. We will advance the state of the art on innovative robotic technologies for rehabilitation, prostheses, assistance, empowerment, and telemedicine.
User-centered approach
This subproject will develop (i) soft technologies for prostheses, supernumerary limbs, exosuits, and assistive collaborative grippers to be used in robotics-driven rehabilitation, assistance, empowerment and telepresence, and (ii) models, sensing devices, and feedback interfaces for advanced human-machine and human-human interaction. For the development of the technologies, we will start from existing prototypes, advancing their design towards the increase of the TRL and impact in daily-life applications. Technologies and methodologies will be designed considering all the cognitive, social, and ethical implications, following a user-centered design approach involving patients and stakeholders, capitalizing on medical units of the ecosystem.
Rehabilitation and Prostheses
Hand prostheses will be developed advancing existing soft robotic technologies for trans-radial myo-electric prostheses and for hand function augmentation in sensory-motor deficits as extra limbs, to enhance their usability and maximize translational outcomes (UNIPI and Qbrobotics). Extensions to other body anatomical components (i.e., lower limb) will be considered. UNIPI, UNISI and WEART will develop wearable interfaces to control assistive robotic systems relying on physiological and postural signals, and for delivering informative tactile stimuli to the user.
Exoskeletons for training and movement recovery can help patients to improve their quality of life, remaining autonomous and active for a longer time. There is recent evidence that robotic training with exoskeletons, based on three-dimensional spatial, task-oriented, and more naturalistic movements is likely to provide higher benefits in terms of recovery in ADLs and improvement of upper limb function. To this aim, SSSA and UNISI will develop robotic exosuits to support patients in rehabilitation and movement recovery after stroke in terms of Activities of Daily Life (ADL). Moreover, apart the intrinsic ability of providing a high number of specific practice movements, robot-mediated therapy can be successfully coupled with virtual reality (VR) technology allowing patients to train in a more ecological and enriched environment which could give an opportunity to practice functional movements and everyday activities that are not or cannot be practiced within the hospital environment. Wearable Robotics will develop and assess new paradigms of bilateral upper extremity rehabilitation in VR for stroke patients training. To monitor the rehabilitative outcomes, UNIPI will develop advanced wearable postural and tactile solutions, and Medea will develop suitable apps to assess the patients’ engagement. UNIPI and UNISI will study innovative haptic technologies for studying how sensory cues can be integrated in pathological conditions, as well as robotic and mathematical tools for estimating muscular-skeletal system activities. Achieved results will primarily target limb loss and stroke patients.
Assistance and empowerment
Besides their use for rehabilitation, exoskeletons, and other robotic devices, can be used for assisting disabled and elderly people, and to support and empower workers dealing with tiring/heavy jobs. In these applications, devices must have limited weight, encumbrance, power, and energy consumption. UNISI, UNIFI, SSSA supported by Orthokey and IUVO will develop wearable and portable systems, consisting of exoskeletons and other orthoses aimed supporting people in ADL, such as soft robotic modular grippers to be used with collaborative robots and novel exosuits. SSSA will develop in cooperation with IUVO robotic exosuits to support workers in labor intensive/strenuous tasks, such overhead manipulation and load lifting and aged adults in wellness activities. In this latter case, exoskeletons will aim at mitigating the ergonomics risk and reduce the occurrence of work-related muscle-skeletal diseases.
Supernumerary limbs developed by UNISI and UNIPI will be also tailored to the needs of people with temporary and/or permanent disabilities to perform ADL otherwise difficult or impossible. Such systems will be composed of AI-powered robotic limbs (wearable robotic fingers or grounded collaborative arms) and wearable sensorimotor interfaces.
Telemedicine, telerehabilitation and telepresence
Devices will be developed enabling novel paradigms of remote interaction for telemedicine and telerehabilitation. UNISI will develop wearable and portable interfaces for remote diagnosis (e.g. tele-palpation), exploiting biosignal trackers, inertial sensors, force sensors, and actuators for tactile feedback. UNISI and UNIPI will design wearable sensorimotor interfaces targeted to telepresence applications with soft anthropomorphic humanoid robotic avatars, in collaboration with Qbrobotics.
This subproject is divided in 9 activities:
- A9.2.a1 Advanced prostheses and related control/feedbacj interfaces
- A9.2.a2 Advanced supernumerary extra-hands and related control/feedback interfaces
- A9.2.a3 Advanced teleoperated humanoid avatars and related control/feedback interfaces
- A9.2.a4 Sensing systems, models, techniques and methods for rehabilitation design and assessment
- A9.2.a5 Hand exoskeletons, and related control interfaces also for telerobotic applications
- A9.2.a6 Robotic devices (fingers and grippers) for assistive Robotic and Augmentation, and validation in relevant use cases
- A9.2.a7 Design and development of wearable haptic interface for VR, telepresence, and telemedicine and validation in relevant scenario of prototypes
- A9.2.a8 Prototypes of robot exoskeletons for human empowerment
- A9.2.a9 Prototypes of robot exoskeleton for assistance and rehabilitation