Reach into the fridge, get out a cold drink, open the bottle, pour and drink. Banalities like these are experienced by every person every day. But what happens when such simple movements suddenly become difficult? Diseases such as strokes, multiple sclerosis, Parkinson's or dementia mean that everyday actions can no longer be performed adequately.
The TUM Innovation Network eXprt is a multidisciplinary team of engineering sciences, neurosciences and clinical neurology. The research network has created a Living Lab that is almost unique in Europe and is intended to capture and map current issues in the healthcare sector. At the opening ceremony, which Prof. Dr. Joachim Hermsdörfer, Head of the Chair of Human Movement Science, invited to the TUM Campus in the Olympic Park on Tuesday, 25.04.2023, numerous colleagues attended the "soft opening".
The lab is to be used in an interdisciplinary way. "With the Living Lab, we can find out what happens in the real everyday life of patients. We simulate an ordinary life situation, but in a controlled, observable environment - we are thus at the interface between the clinic and the patients' everyday lives," Professor Hermsdörfer explains the high scientific and social relevance.
Managing Director Dr. Till Lorenzen is also enthusiastic about the new piece of the mosaic in the TUM Campus CiO: "The new Living Lab, like all the other diagnostic facilities of the Faculty of Sport and Health Sciences, will of course be integrated into our central Core Facility Prevention Centre. We are very pleased to be able to provide the TUM Innovation Network eXprt with the Living Lab, a diagnostic environment that is ideally suited to their innovative and highly socially relevant research questions."
The Living Lab looks quite inconspicuous and rather "ordinary". A modern kitchenette with an island and refrigerator, but also equipped with numerous, high-resolution cameras that record all the movements of the people. The areas of application are diverse and include, among others, examinations of senior citizens as well as patients with multiple sclerosis and dementia. With the help of an innovative exoskeleton designed and constructed by Prof. Dr. Gordon Cheng, Chair of Cognitive Systems, neurologically impaired hand functions are to be improved: "With this approach we can make great progress. We determine how well the system works in the simulated everyday situation and quickly identify potential for improvement, which is then continuously tested and improved again in the lab," Hermsdörfer explains the advanced benefit.
In a second step, everyday actions that patients normally perform at home - without cameras, but with wearables such as sensors - can now also be reconstructed, traced and quantified. "We had hardly any information before without the lab. For example, it was not possible to determine the processes in everyday activities, but this will now be possible. The patients can move in their home environment and we are able to reconstruct the individual movement sequences," Hermsdörfer continues.
One of the future challenges will also be to make new technologies usable for the everyday home use of patients with movement disorders and to test them in the lab. In cooperation with the Munich Institute of Robotics and Machine Intelligence (MIRMI), systems in the field of virtual and augmented reality are therefore being developed and tested at the Chair of Movement Science: "A simple example is to support the patient in making tea. If he no longer knows what to do, the system should provide assistance and set such strong stimuli that a threshold is overcome in order to make actions retrievable for the patient," explains movement scientist Hermsdörfer. One of the special challenges at the moment is to transmit these tips at the right time. In the future, this could considerably improve the quality of life of people.
MIRMI will be presenting and exhibiting promising advances and further innovative and sustainable technological solutions for the central challenges of our time at automatica, the world's leading trade fair for intelligent automation and robotics, from 27 to 30 June in Munich.
To the homepage of the Chair of Human Movement Science
To the homepage of TUM Innovation Network eXprt
Contact:
Prof. Dr. Joachim Hermsdörfer
Chair of Human Movement Science
Georg-Brauchle Ring 60/62
80992 München
phone: 089 289 24550
e-Mail: joachim.hermsdoerfer(at)tum.de
Text: Bastian Daneyko
Photos: TUM/private