HEИндивидуална стипендия2023–2025

BalancingACT · Balancing Adaptive Cooperative Technology

„Хоризонт Европа“ — Действия „Мария Склодовска-Кюри“

Период: 2023-08-01 → 2025-07-31
Финансиране от ЕС: 187 624 €
Участници: 1
Схема: HORIZON-TMA-MSCA-PF-EF

Линиите свързват координатора с партньорите.

Накратко на български

Леки роботизирани устройства с жироскопични механизми се изследват за подобряване на равновесието и походката при хора. Това е важно, за да се намали рискът от падане и да се увеличи автономността на хората с неврологични или възрастови проблеми.

Този кратък обзор е генериран от изкуствен интелект

Кратко обяснение, генерирано от езиков модел по текста на CORDIS. Оригиналът е по-долу.

Резултати накратко

Balancing Adaptive Cooperative Technology

Balance and gait impairments are among the most disabling consequences of neurological and age-related conditions. They affect millions of people in Europe and worldwide, limiting independence, reducing participation in society, and increasing the risk of falls and fall-related injuries. Falls are a leading cause of hospitalization, long-term care admission, and loss of autonomy, making balance disorders a critical public health and societal challenge. Current solutions, such as canes or walkers, provide partial support, although there is room for improvement. In addition to requiring use of the hands, these devices can be bulky, stigmatizing, or insufficient in dynamic and real-life environments. Rehabilitation can improve motor control, but the effectiveness is limited by the nature of the impairments: some conditions are degenerative, leading to progressive decline, and the specific pattern of impairments varies greatly between individuals. There is, therefore, a pressing need for innovative, user-friendly technologies that can actively support balance, enhance rehabilitation, and ultimately reduce fall risk. Within this context, the BalancingACT project set out to explore how lightweight, wearable robotic devices (i.e., gyroscopic actuators capable of modulating whole-body stability) can be harnessed to improve balance and gait. The primary goal of this project was to integrate insights from motor learning and neuromechanics research in order to effectively adapt both the wearable robotic devices as well as the human using the device.

Текст от CORDIS, на английски · Данни: CORDIS, © Европейски съюз

Цел на проекта

Balance impairment affects a large proportion of the global population, as a symptom of many neurological diseases and a consequence of advanced age. Methods to improve balance through rehabilitation or assistive devices are effective but are limited by the availability of physiotherapists or by the strength and agility of the patient. While robotic assistive devices could augment mobility, extensive training is often necessary to receive the full benefits. BalancingACT will tackle this bottleneck by investigating methods to facilitate co-adaptation of user and balance assistance, providing personalized assistance directly targeting balance outcomes. The GyBAR, a gyroscopic backpack, has improved standing and walking balance for both healthy and stroke populations, but could benefit from targeted user training. BalancingACT will address three main aspects of human-robot co-adaptation. I will first examine existing datasets from healthy and patient populations to determine which balance metrics explain differences between populations, providing a measure to gauge and optimize human-robot co-adaptation. I will then probe methods to improve motor learning for a healthy population in a challenging task, i.e., walking along a narrow beam. Exploration, driven by the individual or by the device, is a vital component of early learning. I will conduct two experiments, one to understand how self-guided exploration affects learning and one using human-in-the-loop optimization, a method to customize assistance by directly estimating the user’s response to a variety of candidate controllers, to determine the benefits of device-led exploration. This algorithm has previously elicited positive learning effects in exoskeletons and can also provide insight into the third aspect of co-adaptation: adapting the device to the user. In the long term, these results can be used to not only improve outcomes for the GyBAR but can also be generalized to other balance assistive devices.

Оригинален текст от CORDIS (на английски).

Участници

ERASMUS UNIVERSITAIR MEDISCH CENTRUM ROTTERDAM · RotterdamКоординаторНидерландия