Robotic rehabilitation for stroke patients has been an active field of research since the 1990s. There has been many studies focusing on mechanical design of robotic devices, design of software and interfaces for the patients and therapists, identifying quantitative and objective measures for motor improvement, and developing different operating modes/scenarios for the devices. However, a unified set of robotic (based on data captured by the robotic device) motor function improvement measures still does not exist.
The implementation of training virtual environments (TVEs) is intended to reduce risk, improve and accelerate learning over traditional training methods, thereby transferring what is learned in the simulation to the targeted real world task. One type of TVE employs a type of robotic force feedback, also called haptic guidance, to assist the human trainee in performing the critical components of the task. Prior work suggests that these haptic guidance schemes perform best when the level of guidance is based on the trainee's changing level of performance during training.
We are developing a Respiratory Motion Management System (RMMS) to maintain uniform and steady breathing patterns for lung cancer patients during radiotherapy treatment using tactile feedback. A well know “gated-therapy” technique targets infected tumors during either at the full inhale or at the full exhale posture. In order to reduce the exposure time and increase the efficacy of treatment, patients need to maintain a normal and/or predefined chest motion during treatments.
The primary goal of this research effort is to improve the effectiveness of skill transfer, rehabilitation, and collaboration via haptic devices. We hypothesize that mediating robotic interfaces (either serving as the expert or placed between a human expert and the novice) can facilitate and improve the effectiveness of skill transfer and collaboration in expert-novice pairs as well as in therapist-patient rehabilitation interactions. Various shared control system architectures for skill transfer are being studied in two phases.