Webinar 2 : Harmony Exoskeleton : A Journey from Robotics Lab to Stroke Patients <Click to Watch>

Speaker : Prof. Ashish D. Deshpande, Associate Professor,  University of Texas at Austin, USA

Ashish D. Deshpande is passionate about helping stroke patients recover from their disabilities and he believes robots could serve as important tools in the recovery process. He is a faculty member in Mechanical Engineering at The University of Texas at Austin, where he directs the ReNeu Robotics Lab. His work focuses on the study of human system and design of robotic systems toward the goals accelerating recovery after a neurological injury (e.g. stroke and spinal cord injury), improving the quality of lives of those living disabilities (e.g. amputation) and enhancing lives and productivity of workers, soldiers and astronauts. Specifically, his group has designed two novel exoskeletons for delivering engaging and subject-specific training for neuro-recovery of upper-body movements after stroke and spinal cord injury. Dr. Deshpande is a co-founder of Harmonic Bionics whose mission is to improve rehabilitation outcomes for the stroke patients. 

Webinar 3 : Robotics for assesement and training of dynamic balancing during walking <Click to Watch>

Speaker : Prof. Zlatko Matjači  , Professor of Biomechanics, University of Ljubljana, Slovenia

                 Head of R and D Unit, University Rehabilitation Institute, Republic of Slovenia

Zlatko Matjačić obtained PhD in electrical engineering from University of Ljubljana, Slovenia. Currently, he is the Head of Research and Development Unit at University Rehabilitation Institute, Republic of Slovenia. He is also a Full Professor of Biomechanics at University of Ljubljana, Slovenia. From 1998 to 2001 he was with Center for Sensory-Motor Interaction, Aalborg University, Denmark. His research interests include human motion analysis and synthesis, biomechanics, and rehabilitation robotics. He has leaded several national and international research projects related to rehabilitation of movement. He holds eleven international patents, two of them were commercialized as standing balance training device “Balance Trainer” and walking balance training device “E-go” (www.thera-trainer.de). His group has in the last decade developed several rehabilitation robots for neurorehabilitation of goal-directed upper extremity movement and for neurorehabilitation of walking. The work of his research group is strongly oriented into transfer of basic science into viable practical approaches and devices with the view of deployment in clinical practice. Dr. Matjačić received “The Jožef Stefan Golden Emblem Award” for outstanding contributions made to science in doctoral thesis (2000) as well as prestigious Slovenian national “Puh Award” for excellence in transferring new scientific findings into innovative products (2012).

Webinar 4 : Design and  control of hand and leg exoskeletons  for nueo-rehabilitation of stroke patients <Click to Watch>

Speaker : Prof. Ashish Dutta, JagMohan Chair Professor in Mechanical  Engineering,

                Dean of Digital Infrastructure and Automation, IIT Kanpur, India

Prof. Ashish Dutta obtained his PhD in Systems Engineering from Akita University, Japan, M.Tech from Jadavpur University and B.Tech from NIT Calicut. From 1994 to 2000 he was with the Bhabha Atomic Research Center, Mumbai where he worked on telemanipulator design and control for nuclear applications. Since 2002 he is with IIT Kanpur, where he is currently the Jag Mohan Chair Professor in Mechanical Engineering and  Dean of Digital Infrastructure and Automation. He was also a visiting professor in Nagoya University, Japan in 2006 and is currently a visiting professor at Kyushu Institute of Technology, Japan. His research interests are in the areas of humanoid robotics, motion planning in 3D, intelligent control systems and rehabilitation engineering. He has over 100 publications in various international journals, conferences, book chapters, books, etc.  Prof. Dutta has also served as member of advisory board of ISRO Chandrayan II Lunar mission (2009), member  of Bureau of Indian Standards, Task force on AI of the Ministry of Commerce and Industry (2017-), Secretary of The Robotics Society (India) 2011-2017,  etc. 

Webinar 5: Wearable Robotics for sustainable welfare

Speaker : Prof. Nicola Vitiello, Associate Professor, The BioRobotics Institute (Scuola Superiore Sant’Anna, SSSA, Pisa, Itly)

Nicola Vitiello is Associate Professor with The BioRobotics Institute (Scuola Superiore Sant’Anna, SSSA, Pisa, Italy) where he leads the Wearable Robotics Laboratory. He is co-author of more than 80 ISI/Scopus papers and co-inventor of more than 20 patents/patent applications. He served as the Scientific Secretary of the EU FP7 CA-RoboCom project, and he was the scientific coordinator of the EU FP7 CYBERLEGs project. Currently he is the scientific coordinator of the H2020-ICT-CYBERLEGs Plus Plus project, the national project MOTU funded by INAIL and is partner of the H2020-ICT-REHYB and H2020-ICT-CONBOTS projects. He is co-founder, director and advisor of IUVO Srl, a spin-off company of SSSA.