New Robot to Help People to Walk Again
From: University of Hertfordshire - 03/08/2011

University of Hertfordshire researchers will build cognitive features into a
new robot designed to help people with damaged limbs walk again. The
high-level control of the robots and their synergy with human behavior will
be based on biologically-inspired principles and methodologies developed at
Hertfordshire's School of Computer Science. "We believe that all organisms
optimize information and organize it efficiently in their niche and that this
shapes their behavior - in a way, it tells them to some extent what to do,"
says Hertfordshire's Daniel Polani. "We believe it will help our system to
take decisions similar to organisms and to better 'read' the intentions of
the human it supports." The techniques also will be used to balance the
lead-taking between human and robot. The aim of the four-year Cognitive
Control Framework for Robotic Systems (CORBYS) project is to have robots
understand what humans need so they can operate autonomously. CORBYS will
develop two demonstrators, including a mobile robot-assisted gait
rehabilitation system, and a self-aware system that will be capable of
learning and optimally matching the requirements of users at different stages
of rehabilitation. 

Read the entire article at:
http://www.alphagalileo.org/ViewItem.aspx?ItemId=97778&CultureCode=en

Links:
Daniel Polani
http://homepages.feis.herts.ac.uk/~comqdp1/
http://versita.com/polani/'=

CORBYS project factsheet
http://cordis.europa.eu/fetch?CALLER=FP7_PROJ_EN&ACTION=D&DOC=1&CAT=PROJ&QUERY=012e99d70a86:4f66:55d86cab&RCN=97393