Engineering news
Trials of a prototype robot are underway that can carry out sports therapy to treat common injuries such as tennis elbow and lower back pain.
Researchers hope the robot will create a high quality and repeatable treatment routine to improve sports recovery, reducing reliance on trained therapists.
The robot named Emma, short for Expert Manipulative Massage Automation, has already treated 50 patients in trials including professional athletes for conditions ranging from tennis elbows, stiff neck and shoulders, to lower back pain.
Emma is a robotic arm that comes with a 3D stereoscopic camera and a custom made 3D-printed massage tip. It uses sensors and diagnostic functions to measure the response of a patient and the stiffness of a particular muscle or tendon. The detailed diagnostics are analysed and uploaded to the cloud so the patient's recovery can be closely monitored over time, which is particularly useful for professional athletes. In addition, the treatment programmes can be adjusted based on the progress of the patients' recovery.
Albert Zhang, graduate of Nanyang Technological University, Singapore (NTU Singapore) created Emma and hopes to develop and commercialise the robot in his start-up company AiTreat, which is incubated by the university.
"We have designed Emma as a clinically precise tool that can automatically carry out treatment for patients as prescribed by a physiotherapist or Chinese physician," said Zhang. "Our aim is not to replace the therapists who are skilled in sports massage and acupoint therapy, but to improve productivity by enabling one therapist to treat multiple patients with the help of our robots."
Emma is currently undergoing user trials at Kin Teck Tong, a modern medical institution with a chain of clinics that offer sports injury rehabilitation and pain management through the integration of advanced sports science and traditional Chinese medicine.
Emma is said to have a user-friendly interface and recommended guidelines for various sports injuries based on Zhang’s experience of treating sports injury as a licensed TCM physician in Singapore for the past five years.
The robot also has several safety features working in tandem with advanced pressure sensors to ensure the safety and comfort of its patients.
Coco Zhang, executive director of Kin Teck Tong, said: "Just like countries such as the United States, Europe, Japan and China, Singapore is also facing a rapidly aging population. Over the next decade, more people are going to suffer from physical ailments such as arthritis and will be seeking treatment.
"Since the younger generation prefer knowledge-based jobs rather than physically intensive jobs such as massage therapists, there will likely be a shortage of trained therapists in future. In our trials with the robot, the experience has been very good, as it can perform most treatments as well as our therapists."
Zhang and his teammates won the Microsoft Developer Day Start-up Challenge earlier this year and the propriety cloud intelligence used by Emma is supported by Microsoft.
After the clinical trials are completed, a second-generation robot will be developed that is more compact and mobile.