BRC2010 Guest speaker

Professor José L. Pons (IAI-CSIC, Spain) will be the guest speaker at BRC2010.

Speech Abstract:  

Restoring human motor functions has been a fascinating yet frustrating research area during the last century. The possibility of interfacing the human nervous system with mechatronic devices, and then employ these devices to restore neurological function, has long fascinated scientists. First instances of Rehabilitation Robots (RRs) were industrial robots adapted and brought to the rehabilitation environment. The adoption of industrial robots in rehabilitation settings immediately led to issues in terms of acceptability, usability, safety and dependability. In this context, the concept of Wearable Robots (WRs) was proposed by the author. Wearable robots are person-oriented robots and therefore more adapted to the interaction with users. They are worn by human operators to supplement the function of a limb, e.g. exoskeletons. WRs exhibit a close interaction with the human user but structurally are similar to robots, i.e. rigid links, actuators, sensors and control electronics.

The next step in robot-assisted rehabilitation leads to the concept of Soft Robots (SRs). They are also wearable, but SRs use functional human structures instead of artificial counterparts, e.g. artificial actuators are substituted by Functional Electrical Stimulation (FES) of human muscles. The borderline between human and robot becomes fuzzy and this immediately leads to hybrid Human-Robot systems. It is in this context that Neurorobots (NRs) and Motor Neuroprostheses (MNPs) emerge. Both seek to obtain motor command signals from motor control regions of the nervous system via Brain-Machine interfaces (BMIs).

During this talk, the author will address the main milestones in the evolution of Rehabilitation Robots towards Neuroprosthetic and Neurorobotic solutions, and will highlight the main research avenues still open for further work.