INNOVATIONS

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UWM engineer building smart robotic assistive arm

By Brandon Anderegg, staff writer

mR2A INNOVATION: Robotic assistive arm INVENTOR: Mohammad “Habib” Rahman uwm.edu/biorobotics-lab

A University of Wisconsin-Milwaukee engineer was recently awarded a $1.5 million grant to develop a robotic assistive arm designed to help patients with varying levels of impairment regain their independence.

The three-year grant will enable engineer Mohammad “Habib” Rahman and his team to develop a prototype for the arm, called mR2A, which is the latest of his robotic rehabilitation device inventions.

Rahman, an associate professor in the College of Engineering & Applied Science, is an expert in bio-robotics, including human-assist robots, medical robots and exoskeleton robots for rehabilitation and motion assistance.

The mR2A is designed to help the elderly, stroke survivors and spinal cord patients, with limited or no mobility, perform everyday tasks like eating, drinking and picking up household objects.

The arm can be mounted on a wheelchair or any platform, and the prototype design includes a tray attached to the base of a wheelchair that holds four sets of grippers, including one that’s modeled after a fork, another modeled after a spoon, and a three-fingered gripper and two-fingered gripper. Because users have limited mobility, the robotic assistive arm must be capable of changing grippers on its own at their command, Rahman said.

These specific grippers might not be used in the final design, but because cost and weight can be barriers for users, Rahman and his team must develop a limited set of grippers with the capacity to accomplish as many tasks as possible, he said.

“It’s like plug and play,” Rahman said of the gripper’s design. “For this project, we’ll be going with a gripper that can accomplish 19 tasks and the research will be to optimize the gripper for many tasks.”

Mohammad “Habib” Rahman tests one of his latest inventions, the Smart Robotic Exoskeleton (UWM-SREx), which is used for upper arm rehabilitation. He is currently working on a robotic assistive arm invention, called mR2A.

A key difference in Rahman’s design from other products on the market is how it functions and its ability to switch from gripper to gripper, said Jessica Silvaggi, UWM Research Foundation director of technology commercialization.

“This is going to be a very automatic and smooth process for changing and choosing the arm heads,” Silvaggi said. “The other competitors out there just don’t seem to have that flexibility that (Rahman’s team) envisions for this final version.”

Rahman declined to provide specific details of his invention to protect the integrity of his research, but said safety and controllability are key to the design. To help users manipulate the robotic assistive arm, the invention will be paired with a tech-enabled interface developed by Sheikh Iqbal Ahamed, professor and chair of Marquette University’s department of computer science.

The mobile interface will allow users to change grippers and manipulate the robotic assistive arm’s movements using their eyes, Rahman said. The project is expected to take three years to complete.

Rahman participated in the National Science Foundation’s I-Corps program, which helps faculty turn their research into commercialized products. Through the customer discovery phase of I-Corps, Rahman interviewed people with upper and lower extremity dysfunction to determine their needs and then refine his invention to help meet those needs.

Rahman has already designed two wearable upper-extremity exoskeleton robots for rehabilitation and a powered glove for hand and finger rehabilitation. The robotic assistive arm is the latest of 12 different inventions Rahman has submitted to the UWM Research Foundation since 2016, most of which are robotic rehabilitation devices, said Silvaggi.

“He’s been one of our very active inventors,” Silvaggi said. “For an assistant professor to put that much time into the customer discovery and entrepreneurial realm is impressive.”

The mR2A project is funded by the National Institute on Disability, Independent Living and Rehabilitation Research. n