Research Themes

BCI: Task Oriented Rehabilitation via Brain Robot Interaction

 


With tremendously increasing brain injured patients, the medical device industry for rehabilitation and substitution as well as surgical and clinic technology is rapidly expanding. Especially a variety of rehabilitation robots have been widely researched from 1990 in abroad and they are commercially popularized to the clinic hospitals and rehabilitation organizations. Recently, as the clinical paradigm of rehabilitation is evolving from the neuromuscular re-education (i.e., the remediation of spasticity or weakness of the affected limbs) to the task-oriented training (i.e., the recovery of the day-to-day’s tasks-carry-out ability), the rehabilitation robotics is facing a real challenge how to answer this new rehabilitation paradigm. As one of possible solutions, integrating Brain computer interface (BCI) with robotics to apply the task-oriented rehabilitation is dawning.

Our goal is to create a Brain Robot Interaction framework for task-oriented rehabilitation in regard to patient-centered training in order to enhance patient's motor learning ability (neural plasticity). For this purpose we adapt methods from Brain Computer Interaction and Human Robot Interaction considering the three steps of the Brain Robot Interaction design process: Motor Intention Recognition & Representation by neural modalities (EEG, fNIRS), Multi-functional Rehabilitation Robot, and parallel Biostimulation by bio-modalities (tactile, FES, auditory, visual).


For more detailed information, see the BCI projects.



HRI: Task Oriented Robotic Hand Enabling Better Human Robot Interaction

 

   



※ Courtesy of the KIMM(Korea Institute of Machinery & Materials), Korea


Robotic hand is an indespensable part of robot, allowing her to well perform specific hand manipulation tasks in all robotic applications (manufacturing, medical robots, healthcare, defense, etc). A good robotic hand manipulation should be task oriented. Especially, when robots are collaborating with humans, the rising interest in task-optimized robotic hands stems from a desire not only a safer manipulation but also a more cost effectiveness and efficiency. Safe robotic hands could increase human acceptibility for directly interacting with robots. High performance-to-cost ratio robotic hands could critically enable ground breaking innovations in all service robots.


We particularily focus on the design of novel mechanisms which is highly dexterous and easily maneuverable robotic hands with intrinsically safe. Advance in high dexterous manipulation is to require tactile or force/torque sensors for robotic hands.


For more detailed information, see the HRI projects.

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