Program - Anniversary symposium

Organizers

Duygun Erol
Vanderbilt University
Department of Mechanical Engineering
Robotics and Autonomous Systems Laboratory (RASL)
Nashville, TN, USA
duygun.erol[at]vanderbilt.edu
https://robotics.vuse.vanderbilt.edu/duygun.html

Dr Venketesh N. Dubey
Bournemouth University
School of Design, Engineering & Computing
Academic Biomedical Engineering Research Group (ABERG)
Bournemouth, UK
VDubey[at]bournemouth.ac.uk
https://decgradschool.bournemouth.ac.uk/aberg/index.html

Julius Dewald
Northwestern University
Rehabilitation Institute of Chicago
Biomedical Engineering; Physical Med & Rehab.
Chicago, IL, USA
j-dewald[at]northwestern.edu
https://www.dewaldlab.com

FUture of RObotics in REhabilitation (FURORE):
A research roadmap for the next 10-20 years

Recent studies have predicted future imbalances in demographics that will affect most societies in the next 20 years. Health care and assistance particularly in domestic situations is of growing importance and there is a clear need to explore technological solutions for support.
There will be an emphasis on identifying where technological input is appropriate and potentially beneficial by creating a platform that can help understand the issues better. The aim of the symposium is to review the most important challenges and recent developments in providing support as understood by experts in the field. The engineering community is best placed to ensure that human interactions are addressed and that technology provides genuine solutions to the problems. This symposium will particularly provide a forum to discuss the future of robotics in rehabilitation and will conclude with a roadmap to steer the future direction in this area.

Key Benefits of the Symposium

• To present the most pressing issues facing an ageing population from the experts in the professions, exploring the social and healthcare needs particularly in domestic environments with robotic systems.
• To appraise the current technology capabilities in supportive technology, including research into user led technology.
• To provide a platform to bring together engineers, academic and industry researchers, social and health-care professionals to explore the most important challenges – from mobility to rehabilitation needs.
• To provide a key opportunity for the above groups to engage in shaping the future direction in this area.

Who Should Attend

All those with an interest in supportive technology: Engineers, Designers, Academics, Industry Researchers, Senior Health-care and Social Professionals involved with:

• Manufacture and supply of technology to the health-care sector
• University Departments and Research Centres
• Consulting companies and advisory groups
• Organisations that represent disability groups and the ageing population
• Consumer Agencies in this field

If you are interested in attending or contributing to the symposium please contact the symposium organizers.

Objective

The symposium is to provide a discussion among rehabilitation researchers, industrialist, and therapists to examine the field of rehabilitation robotics and discuss future directions. The objective of the symposium is to define the motivation factors for development of rehabilitation robotics, to provide the state of art to new researchers, students, to define which areas should work together to build the rehabilitation devices, to determine what rehabilitation robotic community needs to learn from therapists, patients to develop assistive devices, to identify of how technology can be better integrated into rehabilitation robotics and provide research groups actively working on the rehabilitation robotics which will lead to international collaboration between these groups.

Motivation

This symposium is expected to lead the formation of the roadmap for the research among rehabilitation researchers and industrialist. It is also expected to help researchers to network on collaborative research projects. We believe graduate students; new researchers will have a chance to learn state of the art and to collaborate with international researchers.

Program

The symposium to shape the next 10-20 years on Rehabilitation Robotics will take place right after the ICORR 2007 Conference on 15 June (Friday) 2007, in the afternoon. A number of leading US, Japan and Europe researchers in rehabilitation robotics, neuroscience, rehabilitation clinicians, and industry will be invited. Initially the organizing committee will contact all the candidate participants and discuss their potential interests. The list of contributors will be announced on the ICORR 2007 website. The symposium results will be made available to the public and will also be published in a special issue of a scientific journal. Details on the program and symposium themes will be announced on the ICORR 2007 website.