Professor Shane Xie from Auckland University visited school of Mechanical Engineering at the invitation of professor Guoli Zhu of National Engineering Research Center of Manufacturing Equipment Digitization.Besides,professor Xie gave a lecture with the topic of The related technology of wearable ankle rehabilition in Advanced Manufacturing Building room B702 on November 22nd, 2015 3 pm.
In the lecture,professor Xie reviewed that a large population is suffering motor disabilities caused by lesions to central nervous system. One example is stroke, which is the leading cause of disability in New Zealand and the United States. Conventional rehabilitation can be categorised into compensatory, neurofacilitatory and task-specific approaches. Among these three, the task-specific approach has been proven to be superiorly effective in terms of gait function recovery. The most commonly used task specific gait rehabilitation approach is body weigh support treadmill training (BWSTT).
He pointed out that as means to improve conventional rehabilitation, robotic gait rehabilitation devices have been developed to automate the BWSTT process. In terms of hardware, end-effector and exoskeleton types of robots are the two major trends of research. The training strategies of robotic platforms are reflected through the control algorithms applied. Initially, trajectory tracking control was implemented to various robots to replicate leg movements in manual BWSTT. Further development of training strategies have been targeted to assist-as-needed (AAN) concept.
This activity was supported by the International Corporation Promotion Plan of School of Mechanical and Engineering.
