Postgraduate research students

Stroke rehabilitation is transforming by integrating advanced sensing technologies that better connect clinical therapy with real-world recovery. The combination of Electromyography (EMG) and tactile sensing offers new opportunities to assess motor function, detect motion intent, and provide personalized feedback to patients. These developments can potentially improve rehabilitation strategies and quality of life for stroke survivors.

EMG is particularly useful for detecting residual muscle activity in stroke survivors to capture these signals, which are proportional to muscle activation. These systems enable stroke patients to participate in their recovery by using residual muscle signals to guide movements. However, current systems are still not able to provide an accurate force-based feedback

Electrical Impedance Tomography (EIT) is a promising imaging technique for tactile sensing applications due to its flexibility, scalability, and cost-effectiveness compared to conventional array sensors. EIT-based tactile sensors use electrodes placed around a pressure-sensitive material to inject currents and measure voltage distributions. Reconstruction algorithms then generate spatial maps of the changes in conductivity corresponding to the applied forces or touches. These sensors adapt to the curvature of limbs, enabling real-time monitoring of grip strength and compensatory movements during therapy tasks. For example, tactile feedback systems embedded in wearable devices can deliver signals to correct improper motions while tracking progress over time. The novelty of these sensors is that they could be embedded into flexible gloves to map the pressure distribution of patients when grasping an object, which would be very helpful to tailor the rehabilitation process.