KEYNOTE SPEAKER

Novel Robots for Patient-Cooperative Rehabilitation

Prof. Robert Riener
University Hospital Balgrist and ETH Zurich, Switzerland

Abstract

Robotic technologies and their clinical applications play an increasingly important role in neurorehabilitation. However, most rehabilitation robots work with patients in a “master-slave” relationship, thus, forcing the patient to follow a predetermined motion without consideration of voluntary efforts or behaviour of the patient. During such unidirectional communication, the loop is not closed by the human in order to adjust the device to the biomechanical or physiological state of the patient, or his/her engagement and intention. We developed novel neurorehabilitation robots that offer a new approach by placing the human into the loop. Our robots enable a bi-directional interaction and assist in a compliant way, just as much as needed, so that the patient can contribute to the movement with own voluntary effort. The patient is challenged in a moderate but engaging and motivating way without causing undue stress or harm. In this talk, I will present examples of patient-cooperative control that have been implemented in our novel robots applied to the neurorehabilitation of gait and arm function.

Biography of the Keynote Speaker

Robert Riener studied Mechanical Engineering at TU München, Germany, and University of Maryland, USA. He received a Dr.-Ing. degree in Engineering from the TU München in 1997. After postdoctoral work from 1998-1999 at the Centro di Bioingegneria, Politecnico di Milano, he returned to the TU München, where he completed his Habilitation in the field of Biomechatronics in 2003. From 2003-2006 he was assistant professor of Rehabilitation Engineering at the Automatic Control Laboratory of the ETH Zurich and Spinal Cord Injury Center of the University Hospital Balgrist (“double-professorship”). From 2006-2010 he has been associate professor and since June 2010 full professor for Sensory-Motor Systems at the Mechanical Engineering Department of ETH Zurich, while maintaining the double professorship with the University of Zurich. From 2008 till 2011 Dr. Riener was the head of the Institute of Robotics and Intelligent Systems (IRIS) at ETH Zurich. From 2009 till 2011 Dr. Riener was the deputy head of the Mechanical Engineering Department, ETH Zurich. In 2012 he moved into the newly founded ETH Department of Health Sciences and Technology. His research interests include rehabilitation robotics, virtual reality in medicine, biomechanics, and biomechatronics.
Robert Riener has authored and co-authored more than 400 peer-reviewed journal and conference articles, 20 books and book chapters as well as 20 patents. He was a director of the IFESS and president of the AUTOMED. Currently, he is an editorial member of six international journals, including the IEEE TNSRE and Applied Bionics and Biomechanics. Furthermore, he serves as reviewer for many international journals as well as for the Swiss National Science Foundation (SNF), the German Ministry of Research (BMBF), the Deutsche Forschungsgemeinschaft (DFG) and the Engineering and Physics Sciences Research (EPSRC), United Kingdom. He has received more than 15 personal distinctions and awards including the humanTech Innovation Prize in 2005, the Swiss Technology Award in 2006, the IEEE TNSRE Best Paper Award 2010, and the euRobotics Technology Transfer Awards 2011 and 2012.