MARS-RERC
Machines Assisting Recovery from Stroke (MARS) is a center of excellence established by funding from the National Institute on Disability and Rehabilitation Research's (NIDRR) (opens new window) Rehabilitation Engineering Research Center (RERC) program (opens new window). Our research focuses on robots for rehabilitation therapy after hemispheric stroke, which is the most common neurological disorder that requires intensive and prolonged rehabilitation. Devices that assist the therapist in providing rationally based, intensive and long duration stroke treatments can also be used to monitor progress and help improve functional performance.
The Rehabilitation Institute of Chicago, together with its multi-national partners at Northwestern University (opens new window), the University of Illinois at Chicago (opens new window), the University of California at Irvine (opens new window), ETH in Zurich (opens new window) and the INAOE, Puebla, Mexico (opens new window) make up a multicenter effort to use robots to explore new approaches that improve functional outcomes during either reach-and-grasp or full body locomotion activities. There are six key development, research and training subprojects of intensive study:
Research training is a critical component that includes medical students, residents, physical therapists, occupational therapists and graduate students in engineering and neuroscience. We will leverage the RIC Academy for continuing education, on-site training and archived web-based presentations network.
MARS-RERC sponsors the Rehabilitation Robotics list server REHABROBOTICS, which is the electronic mailing list for disseminating information to large numbers of people with interests in Rehabilitation Robotics. Join to subscribe to the rehabrobotics mailing list.