Low Cost Robots for Rehabilitative Physical Therapy
PI: Prof. S. K. Gupta
Currently most rehabilitative physical therapy requires significant human involvement. This makes rehabilitative physical therapy quite expensive. Members of CECD's Innovation Lab are interested in exploring how recent advances in low cost robots can be used to reduce the overall cost of rehabilitative physical therapy. This project seeks to identify suitable robots and develop the use cases for using these robots in therapy. As part of the initial stage of this project, the Innovation lab is currently engaging in the following activities:
1. Identifying injuries and medical conditions that can be treated by utilizing robot-assisted physical therapy
2. Identifying robots in the market that be used for physical therapy
3. Modeling and simulations of robots for use in physical therapy
4. Preliminary experiments to assess the technical feasibility of the robot-assisted physical therapy
CECD has enlisted the help of undergraduate students for this project. The students make contributions to the project through one of the two special topics courses CECD is offering during the 2013 fall semester. As part of their directed study, the students are focusing on the use of robotic systems to help stroke patients. They are collaborating with researchers within the MERCE center of the VA health system to see if it is possible to redesign an existing robotic system called Anklebot to be more light and portable.
