2021

We thank all our fantastic collaborators, partners and friends for supporting us in 2021 despite the many challenges we all faced. We wish you relaxing holidays and a happy and most importantly healthy New Year! Your RELab

Lena Salzmann started her doctoral studies at RELab in December 2021. Within the StimuLoop project, her research is focused on personalized rehabilitation of gait in patients with Parkinson’s disease, using a neurofeedback loop.

Last Tuesday, we were able to present parts of our work at the Swiss Robotics Day 2021, organized by NCCR Robotics. Jessica Gantenbein, Jan Dittli, and Jan Meyer represented the RELab and demonstrated our user-centered assistive technology developments. Besides intriguing talks, the innovative environment and fruitful discussions were truly a pleasure. Big thanks to the organizers!

On the weekend from 21.-23.10, HackaHealth organized the first hackathon for assistive technologies in Zurich! Within 48 hours, 40 participants designed personalized solutions for six persons with disabilities! We are proud to see that several current, as well as former members of the RELab ETH Zürich were part of the organizing committee!

The Auxivo LiftSuit functions as an external set of back muscles while lifting or leaning forward. In the RELab Homelab we can capture changes in muscle activity using electromyography sensors and changes in movement with a 3D camera system (as seen in the picture). Exoskeletons like the LiftSuit can play an important role in protection the health of people with physically demanding jobs.

Mathilde Lestoille is a post-doctoral researcher, working both at the RELab and at the cereneo foundation - Center for Interdisciplinary Research. Her research takes part in the StimuLOOP project, which aims at investigating new approaches to precision neurorehabilitation of gait quality, in stroke and Parkinson patients.

We had fun attending the virtual RehabWeek2021, ICORR2021! Thank you RehabWeek for the opportunity to share some of our work on rehabilitation and robotics and get valuable input from other attendees.

We had a great time co-organizing the Summer School “Towards a Continuum of Robot-Assisted Therapy” last week. This year in a hybrid format, with some speakers joining us online. There were many interesting lectures, poster presentations, as well as workshops, during which students were designing a personalized technological solution for neurorehabilitation.

It was a pleasure to present our lab and the RELab tenoexo alongside many other exciting research projects from Zurich to the broad audience at Scientifica. We enjoyed the stimulating discussions with interested visitors and seeing the children’s eyes mesmerized by our technologies.

This weekend, we will present our hand exoskeleton alongside other exciting research projects at the Scientifica – synthetic naturally. Visit our booth (nr. 143, UZH main building)

As part of the daily work for research and teaching at ETH Zurich, RELab continues to engage the younger generations and future students or scientists already in the field of rehabilitation technology. Together with the RELab spinoff Auxivo, we offer experience days or mini internships for high school students, in which they can experiment with the exoskeleton training tool "Edu-Exo".

RELab spin-off Auxivo has successfully reached its Kickstarter campaign goal for the EduExo Pro. The EduExo Pro aims to make exoskeleton technology available to students, makers, and hobbyists and make it easier for educators to integrate wearable exoskeleton technology into the classroom. The kit contains all the parts needed to assemble an arm exoskeleton.

In our recent publication in the Journal of NeuroEngineering and Rehabilitation we proposed a battery of novel robot-assisted assessments of hand sensorimotor impairments – we showed that the method is feasible, reliable and valid in stroke subjects, and therefore it could be used in the future to sensitively monitor patients’ progress during neurorehabilitation as well as more accurately tailor therapies.  

Olivier Lambercy and Christoph Kanzler are hosting a Special Session on “Digital Biomarkers for Monitoring and Predicting Upper Limb Recovery After Stroke” at the IEEE BHI-BSN virtual conference with a fantastic line-up of world-renowned speakers (Thursday, 29.7, 4.10pm-5.10pm CET).  

Welcome to Natalie Tanczak who joined us for a PhD. Natalie began her PhD studies at ETH-​Zürich in June 2021 as part of the Future Health Technologies (FHT) laboratory, located at the Singapore-​ETH Centre (SEC). Her research focuses on the clinical evaluation of assistive technologies through a user-​centred design approach. She is particularly interested in developing and improving a wearable robotic hand exoskeleton for post-​stroke neurorehabilition.

Welcome to Christian Patience who joined us for a PhD. Christian started his PhD studies at ETH-​Zürich in June 2021 as part of the Future Health Technologies (FHT) laboratory, located at the Singapore-​ETH Centre (SEC). His research focuses on developing and validating robotic technologies for minimally-​supervised therapy of post-​stroke upper limb impairments. He is particularly interested in implementing advanced control methods supporting physical human-​robot interaction.

The EduExo Pro aims to make exoskeleton technology available to students, makers, and hobbyists and make it easier for educators to integrate wearable exoskeleton technology into the classroom. The kit contains all the parts needed to assemble an arm exoskeleton.

Congratulations to Raffaele Ranzani for successfully defending his PhD thesis titled "TOWARDS MINIMALLY-SUPERVISED ROBOT-ASSISTED THERAPY OF HAND FUNCTION TO INCREASE THERAPY DOSE AFTER STROKE"! We look forward to cheering with you physically!  

We are happy to have our collaborative project with the NeuroEngineering Lab accepted for this year's NCCR Grassroot Research Proposals. The project aims to combine our RELab tenoexo with sensory feedback based on transcutaneous electrical stimulation, promising enhanced grasp support for people with sensorimotor hand impairment.

Celebrating twenty years of eAccessibility, the Swiss Foundation Access for all hosted an accessible virtual event to discuss challenges and solutions for making informtion technology more accessible.