New Robot To Help People To Walk Again

March 9, 2011

Cognitive skills for a new robot which will help people with damaged limbs to

walk again are being developed by researchers at the University of

Hertfordshire.

Dr Polani and a team at the University's School of Computer Science have

just received a European grant of 780,800 Euros for the four-year research

project Cognitive Control Framework for Robotic Systems (CORBYS) to build the

cognitive features of these robots.

" There are already some robots which help people to walk, but the issue is that

they need constant attention and monitoring by therapists and they cannot

effectively monitor the human, " said Dr Polani. " In CORBYS, the aim is to have

robots that understand what humans need so that they can operate autonomously. "

Dr Polani and his team will contribute in particular to the high-level cognitive

control of these robots and their synergy with human behavior. This is based on

biologically-inspired principles and methodologies that have been developed at

the School of Computer Science over the last years.

" We believe that all organisms optimise information and organize it efficiently

in their niche and that this shapes their behaviour in a way, it tells them to

some extent what to do. We believe it will help our system to take decisions

similar to organisms and to better 'read' the intentions of the human it

supports, " said Dr Polani. " Furthermore, we will use these techniques to balance

the lead-taking between robot and human. "

Over the four-year period, the project will produce two demonstrators, among

them a novel mobile robot-assisted gait rehabilitation system which will be a

self-aware system capable of learning to enable it to optimally match the

requirements of the user at different stages of rehabilitation.

Dr Polani is working with Professor Kerstin Dautenhahn and Dr Farshid

Amirabadollohian on CORBYS.

Sources: Hertfordshire, University, AlphaGalileo Foundation.

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