Rehabilitation

A new robotic glove for hand rehabilitation swaps conventional rigid electromechanical components for soft fabric with embedded actuators that are meant to conform to natural hand movements. EsoGlove is lightweight and intuitive enough for patients to use in their own homes.

In 2013, researchers from Yale University reported the discovery of a molecular switch that enabled the rigid brains of adult mice to return to the high levels of plasticity found in juvenile brains. Now a team at UC Irvine has achieved similar results using a different approach.

Researchers at the Cockrell School of Engineering at the University of Texas at Austin have developed Harmony, a two-armed, robotic exoskeleton that uses mechanical feedback and sensor data to provide therapy to patients with spinal and neurological injuries.

One in six of us will have a stroke in our lifetime, making it a leading cause of death and disability. A study using specially adapted Wii games has resulted in significant improvement in arm movement for some stroke survivors and could pave the way for improved community-based rehabilitation.

It can be a laborious business, teaching people to walk again. Soon, however, a robotic walker developed at the National University of Singapore could make the process considerably easier.

Falls are the leading cause of death by injury amongst seniors. Now, however, a new study indicates that subtly-buzzing insoles may help seniors regain some of the lost sensation in their feet, and thus be less likely to fall down.

A new study conducted at Georgia Tech has shown that kids teaching a robot how to play Angry Birds keeps them slinging those wingless birds through the air for longer than normal. The prolonged engagement could help in the rehabilitation of cognitive and motor-skill disabilities.

The FDA has cleared the way for the ReWalk exoskeleton to be sold for personal use in the US, making it the first motorized exoskeleton designed for people with lower body paralysis due to spinal cord injury to be cleared for personal use in the US.

In what is being dubbed as a world first, a quadriplegic man has been given the ability to move his hand and fingers using a device implanted in his brain. Using his own thoughts, the device, dubbed "Neurobridge", effectively bypasses his damaged spinal cord to directly operate his muscles.

In order to study hand/eye coordination, scientists need to keep track of what a test subject is looking at, along with what their body is doing – and a new system is designed to help them do so. It combines one company's eye-tracking glasses with another's motion capture system.

When a patient is undergoing rehab for a condition that compromises their gait or sense of balance, the process certainly isn't helped by the constant worry that they might fall. That's why Bioness developed its Vector Gait and Safety System, that suspends the patient below a robotic trolley.

We've recently been hearing a lot about how exoskeletons can be used in rehabilitation. The problem is, most exoskeletons are rigid. A team of scientists are looking at changing that, with a partial "soft exoskeleton" that replicates the body's own muscles, tendons and ligaments.