IGERT Fellow Christopher Nycz is at the ReLab, ETH Zurich for the summer conducting research

Christopher Nycz will be finishing his first year as an IGERT fellow conducting research in the Rehabilitation Engineering Lab (ReLab) at ETH Zurich, Swiss Federal Institute of Technology. He will be working under the guidance of Dr. Roger Gassert and Dr. Olivier Lambercy. His project at ETH and his project at WPI share a common goal but have two different designs to go about it. The goal of each is to use wearable robotic devices to aid in movement based therapy for hemiparetic stroke patients. These motion based therapies work to exploit the brain’s plasticity, building new connections between brain and limb leading to improved recovery of function. The project at WPI has taken the approach of a tendon driven, soft glove to perform these rehabilitation routines while ETH has a more rigid exoskeleton with a novel sliding spring mechanism to actuate the finger. Christopher’s goal this summer is to combine some of the desirable features of the WPI design with some of the desirable features of the ETH design. Specifically, he plans to develop a transmission system to remotely locate the motors of the ETH exoskeleton in a pack, removing excess weight from the weakened limb. This will combine the benefits of remote actuation present in the WPI design with the exoskeleton design of ETH which doesn’t require the placement of hardware on the palm of the hand. Overall this should be a step towards a more clinically viable device, one that minimizes the obtrusiveness of the device to the individual wearing it while not detracting from its functionality.