Haptic guidance for enhancing human motor learning: Application to a robot-assisted powered wheelchair trainer

This presentation will focus first on the study of the conditions under which robotic guidance seems effective for helping learn motor tasks such as steering a simulated wheelchair and learning a pure timing task (a pinball-like task). Haptic guidance enhances learning of timing tasks, such as driving and pinball, in less-skilled people, and is more beneficial when applied only as needed. Second, we describe the development of a robotic wheelchair trainer on which people with a disability can safely develop driving skills at their own pace with minimum assistance from a therapist. The concept was to equip a powered pediatric wheelchair with a webcam to achieve a self steering function along a course, and a force-feedback joystick to implement an algorithm that demonstrates exemplary control to follow the course, while systematically modulating its strength based on performance errors. Laura Marchal-Crespo was born in Barcelona, Spain in 1980. She graduated in 2003 at the Universitat Politècnica de Catalunya, in Barcelona, Spain, obtaining the degree of Industrial Engineer with a specialization in Automatics. She started her Masters/PhD in Mechanical Engineering at the University of California at Irvine in 2004. She obtained her Masters in Spring 2006 and Phd on Spring 2009. Her advisor is Prof. David Reinkensmeyer and her research is focused on motor learning and biomechatronics, and its applications in rehabilitation.