UNIVERSITY OF HERTFORDSHIRE
             COMPUTER SCIENCE RESEARCH COLLOQUIUM

                            presents

              "Assistive & Rehabilitation Robotics:
                     Challenges & Potentials"


                   Dr. Farshid Amirabdollahian
       (Adaptive Systems Research Group, University of Hertfordshire)

                      27 March 2013  (Wednesday)
                           1 pm -2 pm

                  Hatfield, College Lane Campus
                  * * Lecture Theatre LC108  * *

                  Everyone is Welcome to Attend

                  Refreshments will be available

Abstract:

With the increasing number of older adults, one of the new challenges
is to keep people healthy and independent for a longer period of time,
thus to reduce the burden on health care systems while responding to
the need for independence. Once confronted with impairing conditions
such as stroke, the challenge is then to speed up the recovery, while
having efficiency and sustainability in mind. For conditions where a
complete recovery is not possible, the challenge is often to maintain
a high quality of life as well as personal independence.

While the older adults and their needs presents a substantially
important and large market due to the presence of better purchasing
power, the challenge to provide supporting technologies for assistance
and rehabilitation has many aspects: ethical issues for example privacy
and confidentiality; technical challenges such as personalised systems and
safety, provision of choice and preference, and motivational use; market
challenges in forms of affordability and service delivery models as well
as interoperability; and finally providing mediums for social engagement.

This talk presents some of these challenges alongside the potentials
for use of technology in assistive and rehabilitation capacity, while
mainly focusing on robotic interventions.

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About the Speaker:

Dr. Farshid Amirabdollahian is a Senior Lecturer (Research) in the
School of Computer Science at Hertfordshire. He received his PhD
in 2004 from Reading University school of Cybernetics, focusing
on robot-mediated therapy for stroke rehabilitation. Farshid has
undertaken research in assistive and rehabilitation robotics since 1999,
by involvement in FP5/6/7 projects such as GENTLE/S, i-Match, LIREC
and ROBOSKIN. Farshid's expertise is in the area of assistive and
rehabilitation robotics with specific focus on adaptive and personalised
training. He is a member of the IET (UK) and an active member of the IEEE
Engineering in Medicine & Biology, Robotics & Automation, and Systems, Man
& Cybernetics societies. Farshid is currently coordinating the ACCOMPANY
(FP7 STREP) and SCRIPT (FP7 STREP) projects while contributing to CORBYS
(FP7 IP). (Further information about these projects can be seen here:
ACCOMPANY: http://accompanyproject.eu; SCRIPT: http://scriptproject.eu;
CORBYS: http://corbys.eu


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Hertfordshire Computer Science Research Colloquium
http://cs-colloq.stca.herts.ac.uk