Special Sessions

The goal of this special session is to highlight recent and growing efforts in the field of soft wearable robotics and discuss how this technologies may be used in a neurorehabilitation context. This rapidly emerging field of soft robotics presents a new opportunity to develop a new class of wearable assistive technology optimized for the needs of individuals with residual capacity, i.e. where only small to moderate levels of assistance is needed to improve function ability (e.g. walking, grasping). The technical requirements for actuation, human interface, and sensors/control needed to realize soft wearable robots are fundamentally different than those for rigid exoskeletons, necessitating fundamental technological development in addition to human subjects studies to understand their potential for neurorehabilitation. Should such systems provide benefit to patients, they offer the potential to bridge the gap between the clinic and the community and facilitate high dose rehabilitation in every day contexts.

As Wearable Robotics are currently getting introduced in the market, the legal frameworks, safety standardization and ethical and societal issues of use of such devices are becoming increasingly urgent to consider, to discuss and to settle. This workshop will elaborate on these topics, from the viewpoint of informing the R&D community on the important issues in this field and on the importance of them for the R&D community in so far it intends to work towards products and solutions that will eventually find a real use. Ongoing work in the frameworks of ISO, IEC and IEEE on safety standards as well as human factors and robo-ethics as relevant fields of research will be linked to Wearable Robotics. There will also be room to ask question and discuss the relevance and meaning of these aspects for ongoing R&D.

Wearable robots (WR) are entering an exciting era. An increasing number of solutions are moving out of the lab, approaching the everyday rehabilitation practice and home-based assistive applications. In this context, the quantitative assessment of the technology is crucial for its correct introduction in the market. Nevertheless, a systematic framework to evaluate the WR technology under all its facets is still lacking. In the framework of the three European projects H2R, Biomot and BALANCE, we are developing a scheme for the definition of specific benchmarks designed to lower limb WR, focused on the functional perspective and symbiotic user-machine interaction.

This Special Session will bring together MDs, therapists, patients and designers to jointly analyze lesson learnt from previous experiences in clinical trials with rehabilitation and assistive exoskeletons and future directions.

• Gerard Francisco, (TIRR Memorial Hospital) on Lessons learned from pilot clinical trials with WR and future prospects.
• Arun Jayaraman, (Department of Physical Medicine & Rehabilitation, Northwestern University) on clinical studies with various exos and about strategies on how to maximize exoskeleton use in the clinical environment and in the community.
• Federica Tamburella, PhT PhD, (Fondazione Santa Lucia, Rome, Italy) ln how to Introduce wearable exoskeletons into PhT practice.
• James Chang, (TIRR Memorial Hospital) on early experiences with using wearable exos in multiple sclerosis.
• Rossi di Medelana, on how exoskeleton technology can induce life changes after 35 yeas wheelchair-bound.

This special session aims at opening up space for discussion about new trends in actuators and sensors design and their developments for wearable robotics. During this session, we will have the opportunity to discuss not only the mechanical design but also the novel control strategies that are being implemented for the various applications of wearable robotics.

Topics:

Actuator design and control :
Soft robotic actuators, Variable Stiffness Actuators, Series elastic actuators, Series Parallel Elastic actuators, energy efficiency, locking devices.

Sensor design and use :
Torque sensing technologies, Muscle activity sensing, Measuring Human–Robot physical interaction, BMI, IMU’s.

This Special Session focuses on emerging and rapidly developing areas at the intersection between neuromusculoskeletal modeling, biomechatronics and wearable technologies. It showcases innovative research aimed to increase our understanding of motor function and impairment as well as how wearable assistive devices can contribute to modulate, replace or restore human motor capacity. It discusses how subject-specific features of anatomy, physiology, and impairment can be accounted for in the development of truly personalized assistive solutions. Finally, it discusses future key challenges in the field and promising strategies for addressing them. This is a joint special session with the special session: "Neuromechanical Modeling for Wearable Assistive Technologies" that will be held in ICNR2016. For detailed information please go here.

• Amy Wu, (EPFL)
• Cor Meijnecke, (TUDelft)
• Jan Veneman, (Tecnalia)
• Nicola Vitiello, (SSSA)
• Herman van der Kooij, (TUDelft/UTwente)
• Massimo Sartori, (UMG)
• Manish Sreenivasa, (Uheidelberg)
• Friedl De Groote, (KULeuven)
• Hartmut Geyer, (CMU)
• Gregory Sawicki, (UNorth Carolina)

Abstract: The BioMot project is a European initiative that blends research on mechatronics, neural control of movement and control technologies to develop future robotic technologies that improve the efficiency in the management of human-robot interaction for walking. The aims of this BioMot special session are to show the progresses towards the embodiment of bioinspired and architectural mechanisms and how this can led to a new generation of wearable exoskeletons. This session aims at contributing to discuss the state of the art on novel ambulatory wearable exoskeleton technology that employs enriched information of human performance (e.g. neuronal activity) and bioinspired mechanisms for efficient cooperative (human-robot) performance. The special session considers presentations from the BioMot consortium and will be mostly based on demonstrations of the technological advances that BioMot is producing.
Preliminary program. Tandem presentations and demos:
- Monica Regianni (University of Padova) and Juan C. Moreno (CSIC) on computational modelling of human robot interaction
- Dirk Lefeber (VUB) and Jose Gonzalez (CSIC) on controllable compliant actuators for wearable gait exoskeletons
- Shingo Shimoda (RIKEN) and Guillermo Asín (CSIC) on application of novel tacit adaptability controller
- José M. Azorín (UMH) and Antonio del Ama (SESCAM) on assessment of attention level during walking with a compliant exoskeleton and clinical results.