New Delhi: E100 The Myomo e100 is more than an arm brace: it's a personal robotic brain-trainer.
Designed to help stroke victims learn to control their arms again, the device wraps around their arms, senses electrical activity in their weakened muscles and responds with just enough mechanical power to help wearers flip light switches or pick up objects.
But unlike earlier robotic assistants, the e100 isn't meant to provide permanent assistance: instead, as wearers move, neurological pathways damaged by stroke are strengthened.
Even making an attempted motion and then having the robot carry it out appears to help neurons reconnect: such is the incredible plasticity of the human brain, something that scientists are just beginning to understand.
Approved by the FDA, the e100 will hit the market in a few months -- and it will soon have competition.
“This is an area that’s exploding,” said Hermano Igo Krebs, a principal research scientist at MIT and one of the first scientists to envision robot-assisted therapy for stroke patients and others with brain injuries and neurological disorders.
“There are now a hundred groups around the world working on this. In 5 to 10 years, I expect we’ll see these kinds of devices in all major clinics and rehab hospitals in the developed world, and even in patients’ homes.”
Future studies will test the e100 on people with damaged spinal cords and troops who've suffered traumatic brain injuries in Iraq.
If it works, maybe the researchers could offer a few test models to injured Iraqi civilians, too.
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