This issue of OnCenter highlights recent activities that bring
RR&D developments to new audiences and applications.
- Scott Delp describes a new computer software package developed at RR&D
that can simulate surgical procedures and help evaluate
their biomechanical effects.
- Doug Schwandt gives his impressions from a trip to the Soviet Union with
"Design USA" and the state of rehabilitation
technology there.
- Al Sacks reports on a agreement which will help bring DeVAR, the desktop vocational assistant robot, to
commercialization.
- Gayle Curtis describes our exhibit at the Technology Center
of Silicon Valley, where visitors can learn about the "robot that
serves lunch" and what it can mean to a disabled person.
- Plus - brainstorming to identify new problem areas,
approaching formal evaluation with Dexter, and exploring
new applications for constant force springs.
Using computer graphics to simulate
surgery
Scott Delp
Patients with movement disabilities frequently undergo surgical
reconstructions aimed at improving their limb function. Stroke patients, for
example, often undergo tendon transfer surgeries. During this surgery a tendon
is detached from one location and re-attached to another, in order to improve
the patient's ability to walk or grasp.
Although surgical reconstructions sometimes improve function, these
procedures can compromise the capacity of the muscles to generate force.
Patients that cannot generate enough muscle force are left with weak or
dysfunctional limbs.
Simulations provide more insight
Now, using software developed at the RR&D Center, researchers can simulate
musculoskeletal reconstructions and evaluate their biomechanical effects.
Surgery simulations can give insight into the potential consequences of a
surgical technique before performing an actual operation.
A computer-graphics workstation (Silicon Graphics Iris 4D/25) displays a
realistic model of the human skeleton and the muscles and tendons that attach
to it. This computer model can be altered according to a particular surgical
technique. The results of the alterations are then displayed. For instance, a
tendon transfer can be simulated by graphically moving a tendon attachment from
one location on the limb to another. The computer model then determines how
this simulated surgery affects the muscle forces and other biomechanical
variables. These effects then appear in graphical form on the display screen.
We have used surgery simulation to analyze tendon transfers, hip
replacements, and other musculoskeletal reconstructions. As an additional
benefit, the use of computer graphics has fostered interaction among engineers,
physicians, and other health professionals.
Other applications being explored
The surgery simulation and modelling software is now being tested at four
universities in a wide range of applications. At the University of Texas,
Austin, Department of Physical Education it is being used to analyze human
jumping. In the Department of Bioengineering at Arizona State University, it is
being used in the to simulate normal and pathologic walking. At University of
California, Davis it is being used in the Mechanical Engineering Department to
analyze shoulder movement. And, in the Department of Integrative Biology at
University of California, Berkeley is being used to develop models of other
animals. Scott Delp recently joined the faculty of Northwestern University and
will continue working on surgery simulation there. He can be reached at the
Rehabilitation Institute of Chicago.
The authors of the software and the technology transfer staff are now
exploring the possibility of distributing this software through commercial
channels. For technical information about this project, contact Scott Delp,
Peter Loan or Eric Topp at 650/493-5000 ext. 6-4474. For information about
patent rights and licensing call Al Sacks at 650/493-5000 ext 6-4475.
From Russia with love
Doug Schwandt
Doug Schwandt, a biomedical engineer at the Rehabilitation R&D Center,
recently spent several weeks as a "Designer in Residence" with the U
S. Information Agency's Design USA, a cultural exchange exhibit on tour in the
Soviet Union. The exhibit featured the Handbike, an arm-powered bicycle
developed at the RR&D Center. Doug worked with the exhibit in Novosibirsk,
a large city in central Siberia, and reflects here on the state of
rehabilitation technology in the Soviet Union.
In addition to their struggle to move toward a free market and revamp their
socio-political foundations, the Soviets are desperately attempting to catch up
to the West in rehabilitation technology and services. Novosibirsk is a city of
1.4 million people located at the crossroads of the TransSiberian Railroad and
the River Ob. Within this city we see exceptional cultural programs and
Akademgorodok, a prestigious university and research center. This city is the
hub of Siberia and has immense beauty and natural resources.
Scarcity of wheelchairs
During my five weeks in Novosibirsk (and two additional weeks travel in Moscow,
Georgia, Estonia and Leningrad) I encountered only a few people in wheelchairs.
According to figures from the Russian Federation Ministry of Social Assistance
in Moscow, 360,000 wheelchairs are needed in the Soviet Union in the immediate
future, but only about 22,000 are produced each year. I saw few individuals in
wheelchairs during my stay, probably because Soviet wheelchairs are usually so
large that they do not fit into most of the very narrow apartment building
elevators. Since many Soviets live in apartments, mobility impaired people
often remain home-bound.
Lightweight wheelchair production
Thanks to design and on-site fabrication training from Ralf Hotchkiss and Mark
Krizack, of Berkeley, California, an Aeroflot helicopter maintenance facility
in Novosibirsk is converting some of its space and resources to wheelchair
production. They plan to build a compact, lightweight wheelchair with a novel
suspension particularly well suited to the rough riding surfaces. I provided
the production engineer with a set of Handbike drawings so they could build
arm-powered bicycles once the wheelchair production is underway. However, the
unpredictable traffic, poor road conditions lack of curb cuts and bike lanes
will make wheelchair riding, and arm-powered cycling both difficult and
dangerous.
Soviet engineers from fledgling wheelchair manufacturers were very
interested in an article on lightweight wheelchairs which appeared in Sports 'n
Spokes (the magazine for wheelchair sports published by the Paralyzed Veterans
of America). The article included many photographs of wheelchairs and provided
company addresses, enabling the Soviet enterprises to contact U.S.
manufacturers and discuss possible joint ventures.
Special needs seminar
A "Design for Special Needs" seminar was held Sept. 26-28 as part of
Design USA's visit to Novosibirsk. A panel of experts from the United States
included Ruth Hall Lusher, director, U.S. Architectural and Transportation
Barriers Compliance board; Paul Hearne, president, The Dole Foundation For
Employment of People With Disabilities; Ed Matthai,, Chicago architect (active
in the National Easter Seal Society); Jim Mueller, rehabilitation engineer,
Alexandria, VA; and Larry Scadden, Rehabilitation Engineering Center,
Washington DC.
The seminar drew more than 200 people from various governmental and
charitable organizations working to improve life for the disabled in Russia.
They were very interested in barrier-free design and in the 1990 American
Disabilities Act. In one instance, a representative from a nearby community
requested that the seminar panel share detailed laws and programs which his
community might implement directly. There were very few disabled people
attending the seminar. Even if they had wanted to attend, the mobility-impaired
would have been discouraged by the lack of an elevator for reaching the
second-floor meeting room.
Disability sports club
A Sports Club of Disabled has formed in Novosibirsk. They recently acquired a
ground-floor wing of a new field house for a meeting and training center. The
Sports Club has started a wheelchair basketball team, and publishes a weekly
newspaper as a fund-raiser. While there, I had an opportunity to see the clever
hand control design for the manual transmission in one athlete's car.
Despite their country's discouraging difficulties, the Soviets are
determined to make great strides in improving rehabilitation products and
services, and to reshape attitudes toward individuals with disabilities. As
with the manual transmission automobile hand controls that might be useful in
American cars, both the U.S. and the USSR have much to gain from technology
exchange. Since the Soviets now find themselves overwhelmed by the rapid
changes taking place in their country, we must take the initiative.
Technology exposed in the High-tech
Garage
Gayle Curtis
The doors of the exhibit hall
look like those of a vintage garage, natural wood on big hinges, swinging as
wide as a car to accommodate visitors. The High-Tech Garage is a 15,000 square
foot exhibit hall at the San Jose Civic Auditorium complex. It is part of The
Technology Center of Silicon Valley, and on Monday, October 29, 1990 it
completed its transformation into an exciting, interactive gallery of
technology. It's a place to be entertained and enthralled and to learn.
Clusters of exhibits expose both recent developments and fundamental concepts
in microelectronics, space, biotechnology, bicycles, materials and robotics.
Visitors can learn about many of the technologies at the heart of Silicon
Valley's success. For natives and residents of the Valley it's often a chance
see what "the neighbors" have been doing. You may design logic
circuits at work, yet still be curious to see a full scale cutaway model of the
Hubble telescope mirror or to design your own bicycle with a computer.
Each of the exhibits is geared for understanding by people of all ages. The
emphasis here is on conveying broad themes rather than isolated facts, and
teachers who bring their classes through find lessons they can take back to the
classroom.
A cluster of robots One of the six technology focus areas in the Garage is
robotics. More than two years ago Jan Berman, Director of Programs and Exhibits
at the Technology Center approached the RR&D Center for help. She had lined
up robots from other Silicon Valley firms that would show the strength, speed,
precision, and intelligence of these machines. Now she wanted an exhibit that
would show the potential of robots in rehabilitation and human-service
applications. The Robotic Aid Project at RR&D Center is known for its
innovation in this area. We saw this as an opportunity to demonstrate for a
wide audience how technology can be effectively applied to the needs of
severely disabled individuals.
We wanted to participate. The Technology Center of Silicon Valley purchased
its own PUMA 260 robot, and we guided a team of Stanford students, Mike Bayle
and Miguel Ascencion, to program a set of basic demonstration tasks. Later
Machiel Van der Loos, Gayle Curtis, and Eric Topp, biomedical engineers at the
RR&D Center, built on these tasks to develop a complete interactive exhibit
that could stand up to the demands of constant daily use by enthusiastic,
curious visitors.
When the Garage opened to its first preview audience on October 29, the
Daily Living Robot drew an attentive audience. The exhibit features a desktop
robot similar to the one used in our DeVAR (Desktop Vocational Assistant Robot)
workstation. It is at the center of a work and living space that a severely
disabled individual might use. On one side of the L-shaped table, to the right
of the robot, sits a microwave oven. On the shelves above the microwave are a
bowl, a cup, a spoon and other objects one might find in a kitchen.
On the other side of the robot is a Macintosh computer system, with a pair
of diskettes in a holder on top.
The exhibit gives the viewer a sense of the interaction with a
voice-commanded robot. Sitting in the wheelchair parked front of the exhibit, a
visitor can push one of the six buttons on the control panel, each labeled with
a task. We then see the robot respond to the push-button command and hear a
simulated voice dialog between the user and the machine.
The robot that serves lunch
On pushing the button labeled "Serve Lunch," for example. viewers
hear a woman's voice, representing the user, say "serve lunch". A
man's voice, representing the robot, responds with "serving lunch"
and begins a sequence of moves. This sequence includes opening the door to the
microwave, grasping the bowl on the shelf and putting it in the microwave oven,
closing the door and turning the dial to cook. The light and fan start as
though it were cooking. (We disconnected the magnetron tube so nothing actually
heats up!)
While the lunch is cooking, the robot serves a drink by taking the cup from
the shelf and offering it to the front of the exhibit case, where the user
would be sitting. When the timer bell rings, the robot places the bowl on the
place mat at the front of the table. It fetches the spoon, scoops into the
bowl, and moves up. When it comes close to the user, it stops, and we hear the
user pilot the spoon toward her by commanding "forward, forward, up, up,
forward..."
Tidying up
When finished, the robot puts everything back. Other tasks include answering
the phone, loading a diskette into the computer and tidying up. In this last
scenario the robot pulls a feather duster out of a clear cylindrical holder,
dusts up the front of the microwave, and zig-zags across the computer keyboard.
To finish, it neatly slides the duster back into its case.
Text and graphics around the exhibit explain how another robot like this -
DeVAR - is used by a real disabled person in his every day job. This
perspective, coupled with the hands-on interaction with the Daily Living Robot
exhibit gives viewers the opportunity to experience how technology can be
applied in an effective, immediate, yet human way to the needs of a person with
severe disabilities.
Tolfa agreement brings DeVar to
commercialization
Alvin H. Sacks
On August 30, 1990, the Palo Alto VA Medical Center and Tolfa Corporation, a
Palo Alto, CA firm, signed a cooperative R&D agreement for final
development and commercialization of the Desktop Vocational Assistant Robot
(DeVAR). DeVAR has been under development at the Rehabilitation R&D Center
for the past 11 years. This agreement gives Tolfa exclusive rights to
manufacture and market any patentable devices developed under the agreement. In
return, Tolfa will pay the VA royalties on sales of the devices. These
royalties will be shared with the Federal inventors or co-inventors, as
provided by the Technology Transfer Act of 1986.
Discussions leading to this agreement began when Dr. Humberto Gerola, now
president of Tolfa Corporation, inquired about Rehabilitation R&D Center
projects. Dr. Gerola had the idea of establishing a company to develop and
market rehabilitation products. Over a period of several weeks, Dr. Gerola
brought potential investors into the RR&D Center to talk with investigators
about their various projects.
Two products were finally selected for commercialization, the Computerized
Visual Communication (C-VIC) system for severely impaired aphasics, and the
DeVAR vocational robotic workstation. In the case of C-VIC, patent rights had
already been released to the inventors by the government. A private licensing
agreement was negotiated directly with VA coinventor Dr. Richard Steele. Since
changes in the design of DeVAR are still under way, no determination of patent
rights has been made. The cooperative agreement between the VA and Tolfa
stipulates a three-year collaborative effort to bring DeVAR to market.
As experienced entrepreneurs and investors know, for successful technology
transfer, it is important to involve the inventors or developers. One way to
insure that involvement is to hire them. Accordingly, the founders of Tolfa
Corporation hired the principal investigators of both projects and are working
intensely toward commercialization, as only a small, enthusiastic start-up
company can. C-VIC, now renamed Lingraphica (TM) will be the first product
manufactured and marketed by Tolfa.
Why are we sending you this newsletter?
Alvin H. Sacks
With the arrival of this third issue of OnCenter, you may be wondering why
we are sending it to you. The impetus for the publication of On Center was the
Technology Transfer Act of 1986 which gave our Federal agency, and later our
laboratory, the authority to negotiate and enter agreements directly with
industry. The Act offered the first real prospect for us to participate
actively in the commercialization of our products. Before that time, it was
considered a conflict of interest for government employees to be involved in
the commercialization of technologies developed in Federal laboratories.
In this new environment, we formed a Technology Transfer Section within the
Rehabilitation R&D Center to accelerate, encourage and promote the transfer
of technology, including the commercialization of our products through
collaboration with industry. To facilitate these goals, we see a need to
increase the awareness of colleagues, users, manufacturers, health
professionals, entrepreneurs, and others of our existence, our projects, and
our products - hence the publication of OnCenter.
Technology transfer usually occurs in indirect ways, often through personal
contacts and meeting the right person at the right time. We see OnCenter as one
way of accelerating this process. You might see a connection between one of our
products and an interested person or organization you know. You could become
the essential link in the delivery of an RR&D product to the disabled users
who need it. The right contact could lead to a negotiated license to
manufacture and market, or to a negotiated Cooperative R&D Agreement.
Several types of collaboration
There are specific rules for each kind of collaboration allowed between a
Federal laboratory and the private sector. If a manufacturer wishes to build
the first few units of a new device under contract for the VA's Rehabilitation
R&D Evaluation Unit in Baltimore, it may be required to submit a bid. In
this case the manufacturing and tooling costs would be paid entirely by the
Department of Veterans Affairs.
On the other hand, a Cooperative R&D Agreement does not call for a
bidding process, but does require that the private company fund the development
in exchange for the right to manufacture and market a product. In addition to
these, we can also enter into collaborations involving the exchange of
knowledge, facilities, or personnel where no money changes hands.
We would be happy to discuss the details of any collaborations which might
lead to a project or product of mutual interest and which fall within our
mission in rehabilitation research and development.
For more information, contact Al Sacks at 425-493-5000 ext. 4475.
Technology transfer briefs
Adapting a constant-force traction unit for hand therapy
Eric Sabelman
The RR&D Center has developed and clinically tested a constant-force
spring device for applying cervical traction during transport of acute spinal
injury patients. Commercialization of this device has been delayed because of
the small size of this market. We have begun a project to test the device for
an entirely different purpose: exercise therapy of the hand and wrist.
Expanding the potential market into this area should provide an incentive for
commercial manufacturers.
Dexter moving toward formal
evaluation
David L. Jaffe
A Request for Evaluation for Dexter, the computer-controlled mechanical
fingerspelling hand (reported in the first issue of OnCenter), has been
submitted to the VA Rehabilitation Evaluation Unit in Baltimore MD.
Approval of this request will lead to a solicitation, funding, and
subsequent evaluation of commercially constructed Dexter prototypes. An
endorsement of these units for prescription to disabled veterans will follow
from the device's successful appraisal.
Brainstorming to find new problem
areas
The Technology Transfer group and the Human Machine Integration section at
RR&D Center have been exploring the use of brainstorming techniques as a
way of identifying unmet needs and new areas for research and development. In a
first series of sessions organized by Joy Hammel, we met with groups of
clinicians and wheelchair users from the San Francisco Bay Area to identify
wheelchair problems, issues, and possible solutions. In a second series
organized by Eric Sabelman, we worked with clinicians to identify problems in
the area of patient handling and transfers. The value of brainstorming in these
sessions is that the rules of the game explicitly encourage people to defer
judgement and to go for wild ideas. We are now analyzing the information from
these sessions and will report on them in a later issue.
For more information on any of these articles, contact the author at
650/493-5000 ext. 6-4475.
Issue No. 3 - January, 1991