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Robotic Assistance Research at UH Offers Promise to Those With Disabilities

Posted byHoumanitarian

(Jeannie Kever, Houston Chronicle)
With a mechanical wheeze, Eugene Alford has stepped into the future, a mix of science fiction and high-tech research that promises a freedom once unimaginable for the millions with spinal cord injuries or other disabilities.

“I’m not going to sneak up on anybody,” joked Alford, a plastic and reconstructive surgeon who was paralyzed 4½ years ago by a falling tree.

But his halting and noisy steps, made with a robotic exoskeleton in a project led by a University of Houston engineering professor, illustrate new possibilities opening up for people with disabilities.

“We have no shortage of dreams,” said Jose Luis Contreras-Vidal, the professor, who came to UH from the University of Maryland last winter. “Just a few years ago, the bottleneck was technology. That is no longer the case.”

For now, the exoskeleton is guided mostly by a joystick. But Contreras-Vidal and a small crew of assistants are mapping brainwaves in preparation for using them to guide the device.

Last week, Alford moved the exoskeleton – known as “Rex,” for robotic exoskeleton as well as for its manufacturer, New Zealand-based Rex Bionics – by blinking after the brainwaves produced by his eyes was isolated and programmed into a laptop computer.

That illustrates how the device can work for people who have no use of their hands, Contreras-Vidal said. But he said the main thing setting his work apart from other experimental approaches is that it relies on an external brain-machine interface, rather than on electrodes implanted in the user’s brain.

The idea of using robots to restore mobility drew attention last month, when the journal Nature published a study that showed a paralyzed woman using a brain-computer interface to control a robotic arm to move a cup of coffee to her mouth. Implanted electrodes sent signals to a computer that translated them into operating orders for the robotic arm.Intangible benefits

Contreras-Vidal envisions the user wearing a headset similar to Blue­tooth wireless technology, an approach that he said will be less expensive and less invasive. He predicts the inter­face will be ready to test later this summer. Clinical trials could begin at Methodist Hospital by early fall, said Dr. Robert Grossman, co-director of the Methodist Neurological Institute.
(Read the full story at the Houston Chronicle)

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