At a glance:
- Faculty: Engineering
- 39 researchers
- 1 ERC Grant
- Main areas of expertise:
- Compliant, safe, energy efficient and self healing actuators
- Assistive and rehabilitation exoskeletons
- Energy efficient and lightweight powered prostheses
- Implementing robotic co-workers (cobots) in industry
- (Supervised) Autonomous Human Robot Interaction, with focus on children and older people.
http://mech.vub.ac.be/multibody_mechanics.htm
List of publications can be found here
The Robots & Multibody Mechanics (R&MM) Research Group from the Faculty of Engineering is involved in both fundamental and applied research on Human-Centered Robotics for more than 20 years. Her current research covers 2 main domains (pHRI and cHRI) and is applied mainly in the manufacturing industry and in healthcare. With several EU H2020 and FP7 projects, a leading role in the Strategic Research Center Flanders Make of the Flemish Government, and with solid partnerships with companies ranging from multinationals to SME's, R&MM is one of the leading research groups on the topic of Human Robotics in Belgium and Europe.
R&MM is a leading expert on compliant actuation, with a strong focus on safe and energy efficient compliant actuation. Recently they have also started with ground-breaking work on self-healing actuation. Using the developed actuators, R&MM develops several prototypes for rehabilitation and assistive exoskeletons, bionic prostheses and human-augmentation devices.
R&MM develops social robots and investigates their use in for example robot enhanced psychotherapies for children with mental disorders or for elderly care. R&MM both uses its in-house developed Probo robot as well as 3rd party robots, such as the NAO from Aldebaran. The EU H2020 project aims for example to deliver the next generation robot-enhanced therapy (RET) for children with Autism Spectrum Disorders.
A new generation of industrial robots make closer human-robot collaboration on the workfloor possible. These "cobots" or "collaborative robots" are a great way to complement a human's intelligence, creativity and dexterity with a robot's strength, precision and reliability. Together with other BruBotics research groups, R&MM searches to improve these new kinds of robots and studying the new range of possibilities that these robots can offer to the manufacturing industry.
iMinds ICON Project ClaXon: Towards a Smoother Human-Robot Collaboration in the Manufacturing Industry
ALTACRO rehabiliation exoskeleton: Automated Locomotion Training using an Actuated Compliant Robotic Orthosis
Self-Healing Actuators Make Breaking Your Robot No Big Deal
EU FP7 project Cyberlegs: Cybernetic Lower-Limb cognitive Ortho-Prosthesis. Image: (c) Massimo Brega
IWT SBO MIRAD: an integrated Methodology to bring Intelligent Robotic Assistive Devices to the user, with a lower-limb exoskeleton as demonstrator.
The EU FP7 project H2R aims to demonstrate human-like gait and posture in a controlled compliant biped robot
The EU FP7 Dream project aims to deliver the next generation of Robot-Enhanced Therapy (RET) for children with autism.
The ERC Starting Grant of prof. Bram Vanderborght
The EU H2020 Spexor project: Preventing low-back pain with a novel and effective spinal exoskeleton
INTERREG EXSKALLERATE: Boosting SME adoption of exoskeletons in construction and manufacturing industries
Horizon 2020 FET Open: Developing fully-autonomous self-healing soft robotic devices
EU H2020 SOPHIA: Three BruBotics research groups joining forces to improve our work
A robot that can feel what a therapist feels when treating a patient, that can adjust the intensity of rehabilitation exercises at any time according to the patient's abilities and needs, and that can thus go on for hours without getting tired: it seems like fiction, and yet researchers from the Vrije Universiteit Brussel and imec have now finished a prototype that unites all these skills in one robot.
A wearable lower-limb exoskeleton that assists activities of daily living and enables data-driven remote rehabilitation.
The AidWear project aims to develop the artificial intelligence frameworks that are necessary to enable Robotic Assistive Devices (active prosthetics and lower-limb exoskeletons) that give Parkinson’s patients and individuals with an amputation a better quality of life. Building on the results of the AI4exo project and taking advantage of existing hardware, AidWear will advance three areas of interest: intention detection, mid-level optimization, and dynamic simulation.
The project will generate international exposure for Belgian AI and robotics through participation in the 2024 CYBATHLON competition. Furthermore, there are concrete paths to provide a return to society, such as technology transfer to existing Belgian start-ups, reduced healthcare costs for two large patient groups, and dissemination activities to showcase the potential of AI and robotics in healthcare.
This project is made possible by the Federal Public Service for Policy and Support.
In het kort:
De onderzoeksgroep robotica van de ingenieursfaculteit spitst zich toe op onderzoek naar zowel fysieke als cognitieve mens robot interactie. Daarbij ontwikkelt ze of voert ze onderzoek naar exoskeletons, protheses, collaboratieve robots, sociale robots, actuatoren, zelfhelende robots en humanoide robots.
