RI - Medium: Pelvic Obliquity Rehabilitation in Stroke Patients Using Robotically Generated Force-Fields

这项为期三年的项目的研究目标是：1)开发一种名为机器人步态康复训练器的机器人设备，该设备将产生适用于患者-S骨盆区域的力场，以便于对步态模式异常的患者进行跑步机步态再训练；2)设计和实现高水平的阻抗控制策略，以实现顺畅的人与机器人交互，从而促进步态再训练；3)测试用于中风后跑步机步态再训练的机器人步态康复训练器，将新颖的触觉反馈与先前开发的视觉反馈相结合。拟议项目的智力价值是研究通过骨盆提供的触觉反馈来研究患者与机器人的互动，以及研究中风后患者在机器人辅助康复过程中触觉和视觉反馈模式的整合。该项目的教育、更广泛的影响和推广活动包括：1)启动康复机器人本科生；2)与马萨诸塞州高中建立生物医学工程和机器人合作项目；3)在一次重要会议上组织机器人和跑步机步态再训练的特别会议；4)建立机器人和跑步机康复步态设备领域的网页。

The research objectives of this 3-year project, are: 1) The development of a robotic device, called Robotic Gait Rehabilitation (RGR) Trainer, which will generate force-fields applied at the patient?s pelvic area to facilitate treadmill gait retraining in patients with abnormal gait patterns; 2) The design and implementation of high level impedance control strategies to achieve a smooth human-robot interaction thus facilitating gait retraining; 3) The testing of the RGR Trainer for treadmill gait retraining in post-stroke patients, integrating the novel haptic feedback in the pel-vic area with previously developed visual feedback. The intellectual merit of the proposed pro-ject is the study of patient-robot interaction via haptic feedback provided through the pelvis and the study of the integration of haptic and visual feedback modalities during robot-assisted reha-bilitation in post-stroke patients.The educational, broader impact and outreach activities of this project are: 1) The initiation of undergraduate students in rehabilitation robotics; 2) The establishment of collaborative projects on biomedical engineering and robotics with Massachusetts high schools; 3) The organization of a special session on robotics and treadmill gait retraining at a major conference; 4) The estab-lishment of a webpage in the area of robotic and treadmill gait rehabilitation devices.