prof.dr.ir. M. Sartori (Massimo)

INOPRO: Intelligent Orthotics and Prosthetics for Enhanced Human-Machine Interaction (INOPRO)

https://foerderportal.bund.de/foekat/jsp/SucheAction.do?actionMode=view&fkz=13N14909

ExoAid: 'PERSPECTIEF' Programme in Wearable Robotics

The programme 'wearable robotics' is led by UT Professor Herman van der Kooij. This is a national multi-centric project involving Dutch universities and European companies. I am co-responsible for one of the 8 sub-projects constituting the global initiative. The project aims at the development of so-called Exo-Aids: soft, comfortable robot technology supporting smooth and versatile movements. Patients with a damaged spinal cord or loss of muscle power, can come out of their wheelchair and stand up without needing crutches. Another application of wearable robots is preventing job-related injuries, like the lower back pain people are suffering from when doing heavy work.

INTERACT: Modelling the neuromusculoskeletal system across spatiotemporal scales for a new paradigm of humanmachine motor interaction

INTERACT

Neurological injuries such as stroke or spinal cord injury leave millions of people disabled worldwide every year. However, for these individuals recovery is often suboptimal. The impact of current neuro-rehabilitation machines is hampered by limited knowledge of their physical interaction with the human body. Motor recovery requires positive neuro-muscular adaptation to be steered over time. If we could predict such adaptation and control it, to induce a positive change in the future, then a new era in rehabilitation robotics would begin. INTERACT will address this challenge by combining spinal cord electrical-stimulation and robotic exoskeletons with a new class of predictive multi-scale models of the neuromuscular system. This will enable robots to autonomously discover the electro-mechanical stimuli needed for repairing motor function over time. INTERACT will answer fundamental questions in movement neuromechanics via novel principles of human-machine interaction, with broad impact on bioengineering and robotics.

GUTS: Get under the skin

Over 15 million people suffer from stroke each year worldwide. However, current neuro-rehabilitation treatments are sub-optimal. The main reason is that stroke movement assessment is currently done using subjective and not precise techniques. This project aims at transforming current stroke rehabilitation, based on therapist's subjective assessments, towards personalized treatment based on objective quantitative assessments of muscle function. GUTs will develop a soft and stretchable leg covering for measuring high-density electromyography, joint kinematics and musculoskeletal forces. The availability of this information in the clinics will transform the way a treatment is designed, planned and performed. The project involves a consortium of companies, universities and medical clinics including: the University of Twente, TMSi, Bard.zo, and Sint Maartenskliniek

SimBionics

Neuromechanical Simulation and Sensory Feedback for the Control of Bionic Legs

Robotic lower limb prostheses, or bionic legs, have underwent tremendous mechatronic advances in the past decade. However, current prosthesis control interfaces are still sub-optimal leading to inefficient walking. To address this limit, there is need for highly trained professionals that work at the intersection of academic research, clinical assessment and market translation. However, current doctoral training programs do not equip candidates with the complex skillset required to develop prosthetic limbs. SimBionics will establish a comprehensive training program that will equip Early Stage Researchers (ESRs) with the engineering, clinical and entrepreneurial skills required to bring an idea into the market. SimBionics brings together two internationally recognized academic centers, one clinical center and one of the world leading companies in prosthetics. Four ESRs will be trained to develop a radically new control interface that integrates, for the first time, neuromechanical modeling and artificial sensory feedback. This will enable bionic legs to mimic the mechanics of their biological counterparts, so that amputees perceive the prosthesis as an extension of their own body. ESR training will cover all phases of development; from technology conceptualization to translation into a successful product. ESRs will learn to investigate user and stakeholder requirements. They will learn regulatory aspects for medical products, reimbursement mechanisms, intellectual property, and elements that can block successful development. ESRs will thus receive a tailored career development plan including skills acquisition, project/teamwork management, and open science/gender aspects. Outreach activities will be realized to improve public understanding of SimBionics’ socio-economical potentials and clinical benefits. SimBionics will enhance ESRs’ career perspectives and establish a reference for technology development training program.

SOPHIA

Socio-physical Interaction Skills for Cooperative Human-Robot Systems in Agile Production

Collaborative robotics has established itself as a major force in pushing forward highly adaptive and flexible production paradigms in European large and small-medium enterprises. It is contributing to the sustainability and enhancement of Europe’s efficient and competitive manufacturing, to reshoring production, and to economic growth. However, still today the potential of collaborative technologies is largely underexploited. Indeed, collaborative robots are most often designed to coexist and to safely share a working space with humans. They are rarely thought to enter in direct socio-physical contact with humans to perceive, understand, and react to their distress or needs, and to enable them to work more productively and efficiently through better ergonomics. SOPHIA responds to this need by developing a new generation of socially cooperative human-robot systems in agile production. Its modular core technologies will enable dynamic state monitoring of the human-robot pair and anticipatory robot behaviours to: (1) improve human ergonomics, trust in automation, and productivity in manufacturing environments, and (2) achieve a reconfigurable, flexible, and resource-efficient production. By advancing the decisional autonomy and interaction ability of its innovative collaborative systems, SOPHIA will contribute to the reduction of work-related musculoskeletal disorders, the single largest category of work-related injuries and responsible for 30% of all workers’ compensation costs. SOPHIA’s societal relevance and the research groups’ experience in acceptability and standardization aspects of its core technologies will ensure their comfort-of-use by industrial workers, and the underlying design compliance to standards, thus strengthening the competitiveness in European manufacturing. We will illustrate and verify SOPHIA usability through the exploration of three real-world use-cases encouraging potential customers to integrate our core technologies in their workflow.

S.W.A.G.: Soft wearable assistive garments for human empowerment

Horizon Europe (CL4-Digital Emerging): Soft wearable assistive garments for human empowerment

Soft robotics has become one of the fastest growing fields over the last decade, and the development of technologies related to the associated modelling, sensing, actuation and control challenges has flourished as part of the field’s impetus. Soft robots have been demonstrated in diverse applications such as wearable devices, mobile or locomotive robots, as well as soft manipulators. Soft lower extremity exoskeletons ( “soft wearable robotics (SWRs)) are one of the most challenging research topics, and require multidisciplinary approaches involving diverse fields such as neuroscience, biomechanics, robot control, ergonomics and other fields. SWAG aims to explore a fundamentally new approach to engineering soft structures that omit fully rigid materials for inflatable ones made from high-strength fabrics and films when manufacturing human-assistive exoskeletal devices that target strainprone segments of the human body (i.e. lower body and core). Such soft wearable adaptive garments with actuation capabilities offer higher variable stiffness and force-to-weight ratios compared to other existing methods, and simultaneously entirely conform to each joint’s intricate kinematics. Because of this, new design approaches can be used as building blocks to realise complete assistance for multi-degree-of-freedom joints, such as the ankle or hip, by adapting flexible and conforming motions achieved by continuum robot designs. SWAG’s advances will demonstrated in 4 different application scenarios. The project brings together 13 partners from 5 EU countries and the UK. The partners consist of an interdisciplinary combination of leading academics with very strong track records in their respective fields. They are supported by RTOs with demonstrated capabilities of developing and validating application-driven solutions, as well as two commercial partners aiming to lead the exploitation of SWAG’s outcomes.

SMARTSENS: Smart wear for sensing the neuromusculoskeletal system during human movement in vivo

ERC Proof of Concept Grant: Smart wear for sensing the neuromusculoskeletal system during human movement in vivo

Neurological injuries such as stroke or spinal cord injury, leave 5 million people disabled worldwide annually, drastically impairing individuals' ability to move independently. The main element hampering efficacy of current neuro-rehabilitation procedures is the inability of sensing the activity of neural cells involved in the control of movement, along with the movement-generating mechanical force produced by innervated muscle-tendon units, in the intact moving human in vivo. Current technologies for sensing the neuromusculoskeletal system rely on expensive, large, and bulky sensing devices that can only be used in the highly controlled settings of research laboratories. Therefore, a wearable, rapid-to-wear system that could track function in a person’s motor neuron activity along with associated function in muscle, tendon and joint function would revolutionise current neuro-rehabilitation paradigms. SMARTSENS proposes a fully wearable, non-invasive solution to monitor a range of clinically relevant neuromuscular parameters, which currently could only be extracted in constrained laboratory settings via lengthy procedures. SMARTSENS enables measuring such information during daily life activities using a sensorised smart wear that is unobstructive and rapid to wear. This will enable continuous monitoring of the human neuromusculoskeletal system, which will disrupt current movement-measuring and diagnostic systems, by enabling causal understanding of the activity of neural and musculoskeletal structures in vivo at a resolution not considered before.