Editorial Robotics in Biomedical and Healthcare Engineering · 2019. 7. 30. · Editorial Robotics in Biomedical and Healthcare Engineering Chengzhi Hu,1 Qing Shi,2 Lianqing Liu,3

EditorialRobotics in Biomedical and Healthcare Engineering

Chengzhi Hu,1 Qing Shi,2 Lianqing Liu,3 Uche Wejinya,4 Yasuhisa Hasegawa,5 andYajing Shen6

1Department of Mechanical and Process Engineering, ETH Zurich, Zurich, Switzerland2Beijing Institute of Technology, Beijing, China3Chinese Academy of Sciences, Shenyang, China4University of Arkansas, Fayetteville, NC, USA5Nagoya University, Nagoya, Japan6Mechanical and Biomedical Engineering Department, City University of Hong Kong, Tat Chee Avenue, Kowloon, Hong Kong

Correspondence should be addressed to Yajing Shen; [email protected]

Received 26 July 2017; Accepted 31 July 2017; Published 28 August 2017

Copyright © 2017 Chengzhi Hu et al. This is an open access article distributed under the Creative Commons Attribution License,which permits unrestricted use, distribution, and reproduction in any medium, provided the original work is properly cited.

The rapid progress of robotic technique provides new oppor-tunities for the biomedical and healthcare engineering. Forinstance, a micro-nano robot allows us to study the funda-mental problems at cellular scale owing to its precisepositioning and manipulation ability; the medical robotpaves a new way for the low invasive and high efficient clin-ical operation; and rehabilitation robot is able to improve therehabilitative efficacy of patients. This special issue aims atexhibiting the latest research achievements, findings, andideas in the field of robotics in biomedical and healthcareengineering, especially focusing on the upper/lower limbrehabilitation, walking assistive robot, telerobotic surgery,and radiosurgery.

Currently, there is an increasing population of patientssuffering from limb motor dysfunction, which can be causedby nerve injuries associated with stroke, traumatic braininjury, or multiple sclerosis. Past studies have demonstratedthat highly repetitive movement training can result inimproved recovery. The robotic-assisted technique is a noveland rapidly expanding technology in upper/lower limb reha-bilitation that can enhance the recovery process and facilitatethe restoration of physical function by delivering high-doseand high-intensity training. This special issue covers severalinteresting papers addressing these challenges. X. Tu andcoworkers introduced an upper limb rehabilitation robotpowered by pneumatic artificial muscles which cooperateswith functional electrical stimulation arrays to realize active

reach-to-grasp training for stroke patients. The dynamicmodels of a pneumatic muscle and functional electricalstimulation-induced muscle are built for reaching training.By using surface electromyography, the subject’s active intentcan be identified. Finally, grasping and releasing behaviorscan be realized by functional electrical stimulation array elec-trodes. C. Guo and coworkers proposed an impedance-basediterative learning control method to analyze the squattingtraining of stroke patients in the iterative domain and timedomain. Patient’s training trajectory can be corrected by inte-grating the iterative learning control scheme with the value ofimpedance. In addition, the method can gradually improvethe performance of trajectory tracking by learning the pasttrajectory tracking information and obtain specific trainingcondition of different individuals. The paper demonstratedan effective control methodology in dealing with repeatedtracking control problems or periodic disturbance rejectionproblems. Apart from these works, J. Li and coworkersdesigned an open-structured treadmill gait trainer for lowerlimb rehabilitation; T. Sun and coworkers proposed amethod for detecting the motion of human lower limbsincluding all degrees of freedoms via the inertial sensors,which permits analyzing the motion ability according to therehabilitation needs.

Other biomedical and healthcare robots included in thisspecial issue cover a range of interesting topics, such as walk-ing assistive robot, telerobotic surgery, and radiosurgery. To

HindawiJournal of Healthcare EngineeringVolume 2017, Article ID 1610372, 2 pageshttps://doi.org/10.1155/2017/1610372

https://doi.org/10.1155/2017/1610372

improve the walking ability of the elderly, the walker-typerehabilitation robot has become a popular research topic overthe last decade. C. Tao and coworkers proposed a hierarchi-cal shared control method of the walking-aid robot for bothhuman motion intention recognition and the obstacleemergency-avoidance method based on the artificial poten-tial field. In the implementation, the human motion inten-tion is obtained from the interaction force measurements ofthe sensory system composed of force sensing registers anda torque sensor. Meanwhile, a laser-range finder forward isapplied to detect the obstacles and try to guide the operatorbased on the repulsion force calculated by artificial potentialfield. The robot realizes obstacle avoidance while keepingpartially the operators’ original walking intention. X. Li andcoworkers demonstrated a general framework for robot-assisted surgical simulators for a more robust and resilientrobotic surgery. They created a hardware-in-the-loop simu-lator platform and integrated the simulator with a physicsengine and a state-of-the-art path planning algorithm to helpsurgeons acquire an optimal sense of manipulating the robotinstrumental arm. Eventually, they achieved autonomousmotion of the surgical robot. For coping with the workspaceissue during the application of Linac system during radiosur-gery, a specialized robotic system was presented by Y. Nohet al. The design and implementation of the robotic systemwere elaborated. All of these works showed comparativeadvantages versus classical approaches and will hold greatpotential for providing insights on the practical and system-atic design of robots that serve for broad applications inbiomedical and healthcare engineering.

The objectives of the special issue were reached in termsof advancing the state of the art of robotic techniques andaddresing the challenging problems in biomedical andhealthcare engineering. Several critical problems in theseareas were addressed, and most of the proposed contribu-tions showed very promising results that outperform existingstudies. Some of the proposed approaches were also validatedfrom patients’ perspectives, which show the applicability ofthese techniques in realistic environments.

Acknowledgments

We would like to express our thanks to all the authors whosubmitted their work to this special issue and to all thereviewers who helped us ensure the quality.

Chengzhi HuQing Shi

Lianqing LiuUche Wejinya

Yasuhisa HasegawaYajing Shen

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Editorial Robotics in Biomedical and Healthcare Engineering · 2019. 7. 30. · Editorial Robotics in Biomedical and Healthcare Engineering Chengzhi Hu,1 Qing Shi,2 Lianqing Liu,3