TRUE REHAB

Project Description

Thu, 22 Oct 2020 13:33:33 +0300

Background

An increasing amount of people, especially elderly ones, face mobility problems often due to a stroke or some kind of accident. To increase their quality of life and reduce their dependence on others, physical rehabilitation is necessary. The aim of the rehabilitation is to enable the people to re-learn how to use their limbs and strengthen the affected muscles. The traditional way of performing rehabilitation is by helping the patients pefrorm repetitive motions. A physiotherapist is monitoring their effort and progress and adjusts the task and the motion respectively. However, due to the fact that different patients have different mobility problems, the pre-defined repetitive motions do not constitute an optimal rehabilitation scheme for everyone. In other words, the rehabilitation is not always personalised.

TRUE REHAB

Our proposal is about designing a Targeted Robotic UppEr-arm REHABilitation scheme. We aim at defining tasks that are personalised and specific to each patient, with the ability to focus the training on specific muscles. To define these tasks, we will utilize methods from musculoskeletal modelling and various optimization methods. Once these tasks are defined, a collaborative robotic arm will assist the patient perform them, increasing the efficiency of the rehabilitation and reducing the overall duration of it. The solution could be easily implemented in various rehabilitation clinics as it does not require expensive equipment neither specialised personel for its operation.

Funding

This project is 100% funded by UEFISCDI and is part of the P1 line of funding (Development of the national system of R&D). It is a Young Teams (Tinere Echipe) project with contract number 22/2020 and a total budget of 431.900 RON.

Team

Thu, 22 Oct 2020 13:33:33 +0300

Tassos Natsakis

Tassos is the Principal Investigator of this project. He is an assistant professor of Robotics at the Technical University of Cluj-Napoca. His is also responsible for the Modelling in Biomechanics course at the Physics department of the Babes-Bolyai University.

His background is in Mechanical engineering and has done extensive research on the biomechanics of human locomotion. More specifically he studied the behaviour of the human foot in-vitro at KU Leuven (Belgium), with the goal to understand and improve surgical procedures and medical implants. Previously, he coordinated the BETER REHAB project, which dealt as well with robotic rehabilitation.

Besides research, he is very interested in teaching methods, knowledge management and productivity, in an attempt to make research more efficient, pleasant and easier to explain to others.

Contact

You can read more on his personal website or contact him directly through email

Alexandru Codrean

Alexandru Codrean is a Lecturer at the Automation Department of the Technical University of Cluj-Napoca, Romania. He received the Bachelor and Master degrees in Control Engineering at Politehnica University of Timisoara in 2010, respectively 2012. In 2015 he recieved the Ph.D. degree at the same university, with a thesis on the topic Systems analysis of cardiovascular regulation.

His background is in systems theory and control theory, modeling and analysis of biomedical systems, time delay systems, and robot control systems.

In the research project TRUE REHAB he is responsible for the nonlinear control design for the robot that assists the patient in the rehabilitation procedure.

Contact

Office room C21, Dorobantilor 71-73, Cluj-Napoca, Romania.

Email: alexandru.codrean@aut.utcluj.ro

Ioana Ulici

Ioana Ulici is a Teaching Assistant of Robotics at the Technical University of Cluj-Napoca. She graduated at the same university with a thesis on cost-effective prototypes of arm prosthetics. Currently enrolled in the Advanced Processes Control master’s degree, her input in the TRUE REHAB project consists mainly of planning and control of the robotic arm used in the patient’s rehabilitation process.

Progress

Fri, 04 Dec 2020 08:15:33 +0300

In this page, you’ll be able to follow the progress of this project and get access to any public deliverables and publications.

Deliverables

Project website
Contingency Plan
Dissemination Plan
Study protocol
Muscle parameters identification algorithm
Optimal trajectories calculation
Validation study

Progress reports

Scientific report of the project for 2020

Scientific report of the project for 2021

Final Scientific report of the project (2022)

Ethics approval

Fri, 01 Apr 2022 10:48:13 +0300

Due to the nature of the project, we needed to obtain an approval from the ethical committee of the University, before proceeding with any measurements involving human volunteers. As part of the application for an ethics approval, we have composed a study protocol and submited an official request.

Today, we received news that our application was evaluated and that the committee has approved our request! So we are good to go with our final validation study that is planned to take place in July 2022.

Motor identification preprint

Wed, 15 Dec 2021 12:29:21 +0300

A little while ago, we posted about experiments we’re doing for identifying the torque-current relationship of the motors of the UR5. We’ve been working silently, but steadily, and we are happy to announce that we have some good results! We can now identify torque-current and friction parameters for each one of the joints of the UR5 individually.

This is possible by performing velocity steps on each joint, and by measuring the current that is drawn by the motors. Knowing the masses of the robot’s links is also essential for calculating the torques that are acting on the robot due to gravity.

This work has been send for publications to ICONS 2022, but we also made it publicly available as a pre-print. The associated dataset that we generated and used for the identification is also freely available.

Sliding mode controller

Fri, 03 Dec 2021 10:34:25 +0200

To be able to implement the rehabilitation scheme envisioned in this project, we needed to transfer the controller from simulation to the real robot. We chose to do this implementation using ROS, an open-source and community driven robot framework. With ROS, we can developrobot-agnostic applications which are modular and can be easily transferred to different typesof robots. This is important for the current project, as we are trying to develop a rehabilitationscheme that could be used with different types of manipulators.Within the ROS community, there are existing packages for working with the UR5. Startingfrom those, we developed our own controller using the ros_control package, which communicatesdirectly with the robot.

Since the internal controller of the robot is accepting joint velocities asinput, our Sliding Mode Controller was designed so that it outputs a velocity reference.We performed several tests, further tuning the controller to adjust for the differences betweensimulation and real robot, and we performed a validation test on a trajectory that is relevant forpossible rehabilitation tasks. The performance of the sliding mode controller in cooperation withthe internal controller of the robot showed remarkable results, following the desired trajectoryand being robust to external disturbances. This means that we are able to use it safely while performing rehabilitation tasks.

Researchers' Night 2021

Sat, 02 Oct 2021 21:55:21 +0200

Every year, the European Commission is organising a pan-European event called “Researcher’s night”. The goal is to invite researchers from all over Europe to showcase their work to the general public. This year’s edition was organised on the 24th of September and it Cluj it took place on the iconic building called ‘Casino’. The Casino is on the heart of the Central park of the city, and it is the place where official ceremonies of the city take place, among other events. This offers the possibility of attracting passbyers to learn about research activities that are taking place in our city.

We decided to participate since our research has a lot of implications on the daily life of the general public, since most of us have someone close by that needs to undergo physical rehabilitation, be it a member of the family or a friend. For explaining our research both to older and younger audience, we prepared a demonstration where the participants could control our robot using just their arms. A depth camera would register the motion of the participant’s arm, and the robot would try to replicate the motion. The camera would detect whether the hand of the participant is open or closed, and it would translate it into a gripping motion. If the participants were able to grasp a candy from a predefined position, then they would go home with their candy on their own hand.

After this simple demonstration we would explain about the use of robots in the rehabilitation environment and their benefits for the standards of living of people who need to undergo rehabilitation. Several people have visited our stand and tried our demonstration and we believe that we made a small step in the direction of explaining our work to the general public.

Torque Current Relationship

Thu, 15 Jul 2021 12:41:30 +0300

In the process of developing a new controller for the UR5 robot arm, we need to know with good accuracy the equations that describe its behaviour. One of the main parameters that is necessary for the control of the robot, is the coefficient of the current-torque relationship. Usually, for an electric motor, the torque that it produces is directly proportional to the current that is running through its windings, following an equation:

The purpose of this study was to try to identify what is the value of the parameter α, so that we can use it when designing out controller.

We are currently still working on it, but we thought of showing you a simple experiment to determine this parameter: We add a known weight at a known distance from a joint of the robot, we can therefore know what is the torque applying at the joint. By measuring the current, and by varying the amount of weight/torque that is being applying, we can find which value for α creates a better correspondance with the measured data.

The UR5 carrying a shopping bag with weights in it

Of course, this is a very simple methodology that is not considering neither static nor dynamic friction, but we are working on this as well. You will read some news here soon about it.

Project Presentation

Thu, 22 Apr 2021 17:06:20 +0300

A few weeks ago, we were asked to make a presentation of the TRUE REHAB project and its objectives. Since a lot of our work is still in progress, we compiled a presentation with some results from BETER REHAB and our current plans for TRUE REHAB. You can check the presentation here below (no animations), or download it and watch it on your favourite viewer for animations. For watching the videos embedded in the PDF, I recommend using the pdfpc viewer.

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Robot Manipulator Installed

Wed, 02 Dec 2020 11:37:05 +0200

Since the goal of the project is to develop a robotic rehabilitator, it is of utmost importance to have at our disposal a reliable and safe robot manipulator. This was not the case so far in our lab, as we had available only industrial robots, we therefore acquired a modern and safe collaborative robot to achieve the goals of this project.

After a careful market research, we identified the UR5 from Universal Robots as a perfect match for this project. This arm is lightweight, with a minimal footprint, has a very intuitive controller, and most of all it is certified for use in the vicinity of humans (even when in contact!). It has multiple safety features, both from the software but also from the hardware perspective.

The UR5 mounted on a table in our laboratory

Another big advantage of the UR5, is that it is possible to control it using ROS. The drivers are developed by the manufacturer themselves, which is a huge benefit, since they provide support for it.

We are happy with the initial tests with the robot, and looking forward to the great research that we’ll be able to perform with it.

Website Online

Thu, 22 Oct 2020 21:48:13 +0300

We are feverly starting to work on this project, and we have just prepared the website! This will be the main channel for disseminating the results and progress of this project on a monthly basis. If you are interested to follow our news, make sure to check the website periodically or subscribe to our rss feed.