Experimental and analytical methods for movement rehabilitation and assessment in the community

Preventing injury and restoring mobility following injury, both musculoskeletal and neuromuscular, is challenging. In recent years, the fields of biomechanics and clinical rehabilitation have informed the development of wearable devices and assessment tools that aid in rehabilitation and in maintaining mobility. Wearable exosystems are assistive devices that can target weakness in a specific joint or muscle. However, optimizing these devices for performance across individuals, tasks, and environments, and understanding their interaction with wearers across these different scenarios remains an active area of research. In this talk, I will discuss my work using exosystems, along with principles from motor learning and biomechanics, to deliver targeted robotic resistance training for gait recovery in people post-stroke. I will then discuss efforts to move these systems into the real-world through data-driven estimation of key biomechanical outcome measures. Finally, I will conclude with how these data-driven methods translate to other populations in the community to assess movement and prevent injury, such as female athletes at-risk of anterior cruciate ligament injury.