A Step toward Robotic Rehab
From: Northwestern Alumni Magazine - Spring 2006 - page 10
By: Mindy Yahr

Suffering a stroke can be devastating. Even more devastating, one-third of
all stroke victims lose the ability to walk on their own. 

Now a team of Northwestern professors is working to help patients who have
suffered brain and spinal cord injuries and neurological disorders to walk
again. 

The trio - physical therapist David A. Brown and mechanical engineers Michael
Peshkin and Ed Colgate, founders of the Evanston startup Chicago PT - created
KineAssist, a robot prototype designed to help patients learn to walk and
regain basic balance functions. Patients are strapped into the main frame of
the robot, where sensors connecting to the wheels send messages that adjust
the machine to allow the person to move freely. 

KineAssist, which was demonstrated at the International Conference on
Rehabilitation Robotics in June 2005, works with physical and occupational
therapists in challenging patients to learn from their mistakes. While the
therapist works alongside the machine, helping the patient throught the
motions of walking, the robot bears the patient's weight and senses when a
patient may lose balance. This allows therapists to challenge patients to
reach out for an object or avoid obstacles placed in their path. 

The KineAssist is designed to be transparent - the patient and clinicians
don't even know it is there until it's needed, said Brown, an assistant
professor of physical therapy and human movement science and physical
medicine and rehabilitation in the Feinberg School of Medicine. The device
allows patients to move freely and does not intervene unless the patient
loses his or her balance. 

"Our goal was to develop a device that worked with clinicians and allowed
them to be more efficient in their treatment and more effective by using this
challenge mode of training," Brown said. 

The professors used grant funding from the Rehabilitation Institute of
Chicago and the Department of Commerce's Advanced Technology Program to found
Chicago PT. 

The RIC has used KineAssist with 10 patients, and after a second prototype is
built, Brown and his colleagues plan to run clinical trials, US Food and Drug
Administration approval is pending. 

Chicago PT hopes to have a marketable device in the next two years.

Caption:
The robotic KineAssist reduces the risk of injury for patients who are
learning to walk.