Mechanical ventilation is required to aid patients with breathing difficulty to breathe more comfortably. A tracheostomy tube inserted through an opening in the patient neck into the trachea is connected to a ventilator for suctioning. Currently, nurses spend millions of person-hours yearly to perform this task. To save significant person-hours, an automated mechatronic tracheostomy system is needed. This system allows for relieving nurses and other carers from the millions of person-hours spent yearly on tracheal suctioning. In addition, it will result in huge healthcare cost savings. [read more...]

Intra-gastric balloon (IGB) has become an efficient and minimally invasive method for obesity treatment. The use of traditional IGB requires complex insertion tools and flexible endoscope to place and remove the balloon inside the stomach, which may cause discomfort and complications to the patient. To overcome these drawbacks, we developed a novel ingestible weight-loss capsule with remote-controlled balloon inflation and deflation using an on-board actuator. In animal studies, the designed robotic capsule demonstrated likely benefits of improved patient comfort and effectiveness in weight loss without requiring complex insertion and removal tools. Although the designed weight-loss capsule showed promising results, on-board actuator mechanisms and electronic devices created a large capsule size with its attendant risks. In addition, power consumption limitation and available space within the capsule are the main technical drawbacks. [read more...]

We developed an active handheld instrument that detects its own motion, distinguish between undesired and intended motion, and deflects its tip for active compensation of physiological tremor. This project will extend the said capability with image-processing and computer vision techniques to create a handheld vision-aided microsurgical interventional device. [read more...]

A vision-guided robotic approach is proposed to replace human intervention. A 3 degree-of-freedom piezoelectric-driven robotic manipulator is used to hold a micropipette. A high speed camera captures images of the cells and the micropipette tip under a conventional microscope, processes the images, and controls the robotic manipulator in real-time to perform the intended task. [read more...]

H-Man is a compact low cost robot designed for the rehabilitation/training of planar arm movements. It has an H-shaped cable-driven differential mechanism. The advantage of this mechanism is that it results in a system that is homogeneous, lightweight, and intrinsically safe for use. It can provide forces of up to 30 N at the end-effector (handle) in any specified direction in a planar workspace to assist or resist the motion of the user; and can be easily built using off the shelf components. [read more...]

Stroke rehabilitation is a time-consuming process that can take up to 6 months for a patient to relearn his missing capabilities. As the rehab exercise should be done daily, home is the most convenient place to do rehab after discharge. However, with limited home-visit from their therapists, patients can hardly effectively monitor their recovery progress or whether their exercise prescription should be adjusted. Adding tele-rehabilitation to the process could mitigate the problem by reducing the time lapse. Still, remote monitoring is not scalable enough to support all the stroke patients. Some forms of automatic performance summarization such as repetition or precision of each exercise session are also important to reduce therapists’ workload in the monitoring process and make tele-rehabilitation truly scalable. To practically achieve the goal, the sensing system must meet the balance between its required space, accuracy, ease of use and affordability. In addition, as a stroke patient usually has a high risk of falling, the system could use the same wearable sensing unit as a fall detector. [read more...]

To study the balance problem focusing on problems related to motor tasks controlled by the synergy of control mechanisms allocated between the Central Nervous System (CNS), Peripheral Nervous System (PNS) and Muscle-skeletal system. The approach for balance rehabilitation is to focus more on training of the synergies rather than on single tasks of balance or gait. A device is being developed to bring such rehabilitation therapies into patients' everyday life activity. [read more...]