[socios-spr] CLAWAR 2017 Special Session onWearable Robotics for Assistance and Rehabilitation (WRAR)

[cristina]

Apologies for multiple postings

New deadline:20 February 2017
List of speakers is now included

  *****************************************************************************
Call for Papers

Special Session on *Wearable Robotics for Assistance and Rehabilitation 
(WRAR)*

within the coming *CLAWAR 2017* - 20th International Conference on 
Climbing and Walking Robots and the Support Technologies for Mobile 
Machines Oporto, Portugal, September 11-13, 2017

https://clawar.org/clawar2017/

*Theme*: Rehabilitation and assistive robotics*

************************************************************************************** 


ABOUT THE SPECIAL SESSION:*

Abstract*: The adoption of novel active wearable devices, either for 
daily assistance or clinical rehabilitation, requires new approaches to 
ultimately enable efficient treatments and better facilitation of 
movement for individuals who present loss of motor abilities. In 
particular, since these devices interact directly with humans there are 
major challenges that still need to be addressed such as acceptance, 
effectiveness, safety and functionality. Thus, there is a need to 
consider further the knowledge from complementary disciplines such as 
neuronal sciences, human-centered design, computer science, 
biomechanics, neuroscience, and psychology. This will enable to design 
the wearable devices as a natural extension of the human body, a 
fundamental feature for sustainability of such system.

The proposed session will bring talks to provide insights on these 
multiple challenges with perspectives from engineers and medical doctors 
while focusing on aspects of human-robot interaction and interface 
technologies. It will gather knowledge from these disciplines focusing 
on the development of human-oriented approaches to assist and 
rehabilitation gait function after neurological injuries. The intended 
list of speakers is expected to cover the above-mentioned fields.

This session is primarily addressed to young researchers (PhD and 
advanced Master students), researchers and professionals interested in 
Medical Robotics such as Assistive and Rehabilitation and in the new 
perspectives in this field. The workshop provides a unique opportunity 
for faculty, students, industry and the general public to come together 
and learn about the latest advances in these fields of medical robotics. 
The idea is to discuss current needs and future directions of 
human-robot interactive and rehabilitation systems from both the 
clinical and industrial point of view. The participants will get in 
touch with other colleagues in the field and they will have the 
opportunity to improve their knowledge through the presented talks.

Invited speakers will be announced soon

********************************************************************

SUBMISSION:*

We invite submission of full draft papers to this Special Session, in 
PDF format and up to a maximum of 8 pages, using the URL 
(https://www.softconf.com/g/clawar2017). Authors should follow the 
guidelines of the template available at the paper submission page of the 
conference web-site by the indicated deadline. All contributions will be 
refereed and accepted papers will appear in the Conference Proceedings, 
which will be published by World Scientific Publishing Company. A 
selection of presented papers will also be recommended for possible 
publication in reputable international journals.***

Important dates:*

Submission of full draft Papers / Posters 20 February 2017**
Notification of Paper / Poster Acceptance 15 March 2017
Submission of Final (accepted) Papers / Posters 12 April 2017
Conference 11 – 13 September 2017*

Organizers*:
Cristina P Santos, PhD-IEEE Member, cristina  dei.uminho.pt
Juan C Moreno, PhD-IEEE Member, JC.MORENO  CSIC.ES

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*******Speakers*

*Francesco Bottiglione* (Polytechnic University of Bari)
*Title**: *Energy recovering actuators to improve the range, the 
efficiency and the portability: old tricks for future applications
*Abstract:* Wearable robots for lower limbs aspire to become portable 
devices helping disabled people in the everyday life. In the meanwhile, 
a lot of work is still to be done on the actuators side to achieve the 
optimal tradeoff between the availability of powerful and 
long-ranged devices and their portability. The characteristics of lower 
limb movements are not the ideal ones for the commonly adopted electric 
drives. Firstly, they do not allow the actuators to work continuously in 
their optimal operating conditions. Furthermore, peak torque and power 
requested are much larger than the average ones. For these reasons, it 
is commonly necessary to oversize and to overweight the batteries and 
the actuators with respect to their actual usage, leading to drawbacks 
in terms of portability. In principle, all those everyday 
actions characterized by a periodic repeatability – walking above all - 
offer the chance to implement some old smart strategies to drastically 
reduce the energy requirements and the size of the motors. Periodic 
motions are indeed characterized by “active� phases, when energy must be 
provided by the actuator to the user side, followed by “passive� phases, 
when the energy must flow in the opposite way. An actuator capable of 
recovering and storing the energy in the passive phases and to re-use 
such energy in the active phases would consume much less energy and 
stress the motor only with the average values of requested power. 
An actuator capable of doing such a thing mechanically, would do it 
efficiently. Several possible technical solutions have been and are 
being developed and will be briefly summarized. The ones based on 
kinetic energy accumulation 
and continuously-variable-transmission-driven power flow will be 
discussed in depth.

*Carlos A. Cifuentes* (Colombian School of Engineering Julio Garavito)
*Title:* Bio-inspired lower-limb exoskeletons for gait assistance and 
rehabilitation
*Abstract:* Exoskeletons are becoming one of the most promising devices 
to improve quality of life to injured patients to regain ability to 
walk. Bioinspired designs in exoskeletons could increase adaptability as 
well as minimal interference to perform gait movements. This talk 
presents some remarks of bioinspired exoskeleton for enhanced physical 
interaction during gait assistance and rehabilitation, which are based 
on the motion analysis model, taking into account bioinspired design 
criteria, and also concepts of wearable robots.

*Nina Lefeber* (Vrije Universiteit Brussel)
*Title: *Robot-Assisted Gait: What About the Cardiometabolic Load?
*Abstract**:* Lately, robot technology is being increasingly implemented 
in the gait rehabilitation of neurological patients (e.g. stroke 
patients). The aim of this development has been to reduce the physical 
load of the therapist and increase the training duration and intensity 
of the patient. In the past, research on the effects of robot-assistance 
has been mainly focused on gait related parameters. Yet, little is known 
about the effects on the cardiometabolic load (e.g. energy consumption, 
heart rate or minute ventilation). Nevertheless, neurological patients 
are often confronted with impaired cardiorespiratory fitness, which is a 
major risk factor in the development of cardiovascular diseases. Hence, 
it is important to gain insight in these aspects – both for safety as 
well as training related aspects. Numerous characteristics (e.g. type of 
robot, level of assistance, speed and duration of walking, disease 
severity or stage of rehabilitation) however, complicate the estimates 
of the cardiometabolic load during robot-assisted gait. This 
presentation will review the current literature on cardiometabolic load 
during robot-assisted gait as well as preliminary results of own work 
in stroke patients. Particular gaps that still need to be targeted in 
the future will be highlighted.

*Eduardo Rocon* (Consejo Superior de Investigaciones Científicas)
*Title: *Robotic platform for the Rehabilitation of children with 
Cerebral Palsy: CPWalker
*Abstract:* Cerebral Palsy (CP) is the most common cause of permanent 
physical disability in childhood. CP is a disorder of posture and 
movement due to a defect or lesion in the immature brain. CP is often 
associated to sensory deficits, cognition impairments, communication and 
motor disabilities, behaviour issues, seizure disorder, pain and 
secondary musculoskeletal problems. New strategies are needed to help to 
promote, maintain, and rehabilitate the functional capacity, and thereby 
diminish the dedication and assistance required and the economical 
demands that this condition represents for the patient, the caregivers 
and the society. During this talk I will present a pilot study done with 
several children with spastic CP, who trained with a new robotic 
platform called CPWalker during five weeks. This experimental device is 
a novel over ground prototype for gait rehabilitation with body weight 
support for children with CP. After rehabilitation training, both 
patients improved the mean velocity, cadence and step length. 
Moreover, the comparison between pre and post- kinematics analysis 
without the robot shows specific developments for each subject depending 
on the focus of the therapy (mainly trunk or hip flexion-extension).

*Herman van der Kooij* (University of Twente)
*Title: *Rendering lower limb neuro-mechanics in an wearable exoskeleton 
for SCI subjects
*Abstract:* Current exoskeletons replay pre-programmed trajectories at 
the actuated joints. To allow spinal cord injury (SCI) subjects to walk 
again, ultimately without additional support aids, we aim to emulate the 
neuro-mechanics of the limbs in a modular torque controlled wearable 
exoskeleton. We employed a biologically inspired neuromuscular 
controller (NMC), which was based on the muscle-reflex model of Geyer et 
al. This model encodes principles of legged mechanics through several 
local reflex loops that activate depending on leg-ground contact state. 
While the NMC has been implemented in a powered ankle prosthesis and 
shown to normalize gait for transtibial amputee subjects, these 
controllers have not yet been implemented in multi-dof devices that 
support locomotion. Our aim is two-fold. First, we further validate and 
refine the NMC in the context of force perturbations, and second, we 
determine its efficacy for the control of wearable exoskeletons, in 
particular those that allow SCI subjects to walk again.

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  Cristina Manuela Peixoto dos Santos
  Universidade do Minho
  Escola de Engenharia
  Dept. Electrónica Industrial
  Campus de Azurém
  4800-058 Guimaraes
  PORTUGAL
  Tel: +351 253 510190/604705
  Fax: +351 253510189
  E-Mail:cristina  dei.uminho.pt
http://www.dei.uminho.pt/pessoas/cristina/

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