At WPI’s Touch Tomorrow Festival held on June 14th in conjunction with a NASA Centennial Challenge, the public had a chance to see some of the exciting research being conducted by Prof. Greg Fischer.
Prof. Fischer’s student, IGERT fellow Chris Nyzc, was on hand to demonstrate the robotic rehabilitation glove. This wearable device uses cables to control the opening and closing of the hand. The glove is most commonly used in restoring lost motor skills by helping the brain rebuild neural pathways lost as in the case of a stroke. The system would allow patients to perform this repetitive motion therapy in their homes and chart their progress with the computer monitoring system.
In Prof. Fischer’s Automation and Interventional Medicine (AIM) Laboratory people got a chance to use a remote control to manipulate a robotic surgical arm and see a 3D printer used to build parts needed in the research. Also, on display was the research from his recently awarded NIH grant which tests a new, minimally invasive approach to treating brain tumors that promises to accurately destroy malignant tissue while leaving surrounding tissue unaffected.
