UNIVERSITY OF HERTFORDSHIRE COMPUTER SCIENCE RESEARCH COLLOQUIUM presents "GENTLE/A: Adaptive Robotic Assistance for Upper-limb Rehabilitation" Radhika Chemuturi (Adaptive Systems Research Group, School of Computer Science, University of Hertfordshire) 18 June 2013 (*Tuesday*) 1 pm -2 pm Hatfield, College Lane Campus Lecture Theatre LC108 Everyone is Welcome to Attend Refreshments will be available Abstract: Rehabilitation is a restorative process that helps the patients with impairments to return to their normal life by regaining and relearning the skills of everyday living. With the increase in ageing population the rehabilitation needs are raising, adding to the economic burden in many countries. Rehabilitation robotic devices have emerged, in order to assist the therapists to cope with the growing rehabilitation needs. The use of robotic devices to offer rehabilitation training for physical impairments is a relatively new field within the area of robotics in health care and originated from the idea of using robots to assist people with disabilities. Rehabilitation robotics is rapidly advancing based on the developments in robotics, haptic interfaces and virtual reality. Considering the robot as an advanced tool under the therapist's supervision, the key challenge in the area of rehabilitation robotics is how best the therapist's skills can be augmented with the advancing robot technology. During my PhD the focus was on auto-tuning the robotic assistance for upper-limb rehabilitation. In this talk, I will introduce some popular rehabilitation robotic devices, summarize the future direction as identified by the prominent reviews in rehabilitation robotics and then proceed to present the findings from the studies conducted during my PhD with healthy participants. --------------------------------------------------- Hertfordshire Computer Science Research Colloquium http://cs-colloq.stca.herts.ac.uk