Description du projet
Des prothèses de membre naturelles
Les membres robotiques sont susceptibles de remplacer des membres manquants ou endommagés et ainsi améliorer de manière significative la qualité de vie des personnes concernées. Toutefois, il existe toujours des défis importants associés à la reconstruction bionique des membres. L’initiative Natural BionicS, financée par l’UE, entend combiner des innovations dans les domaines de la chirurgie, des interfaces neuronales et de la robotique pour générer de nouvelles prothèses capables de s’interfacer avec les circuits de la moelle épinière et de restaurer des fonctions tactiles. Les utilisateurs sentiront le membre bionique et seront capables de le contrôler comme s’il s’agissait d’une partie de leur corps. La solution Natural BionicS offrira un remplacement intégré des membres humains adapté aux besoins de chaque patient.
Objectif
Missing a limb leads to dramatic impairments in the capacity to move and interact with the environment and to a substantial worsening in quality of life. This deficiency is also associated with a large portion of the sensory-motor cortex facing neural deafness. Missing or damaged limbs can in principle be substituted by robotic limbs, connected to humans with neural interfacing. Despite massive research efforts, however, the bionic reconstruction of limbs currently faces important translational challenges. We aim at filling this gap between academic research and clinical impact with a patient-centric approach that synergistically combines breakthroughs in surgery (Aszmann), neural interfacing (Farina), and robotics (Bicchi). We propose to surgically create bio-connectors (compacted in a bio-hub) to access the spinal cord circuitries by using biological pathways of encoding and decoding neural information. Neural interfacing with the bio-hub will determine an input/output information flow with the spinal cord by decoding the activity of spinal neural cells (output) and stimulating transplanted biological afferent organs (input). The sensory-motor image of the missing limb emerging from this interfacing will be projected in soft robotic arms/legs that will embed kinematic synergies and tactile-proprioceptive functions, intimately matched with the neural sensory-motor synergies extracted from the bio-hub. In this way, Natural BionicS aims at creating a fully integrated, symbiotic replacement of human limbs with robotic parts that the user will feel and command as part of the body. This aim will be achieved with clinical translation aided by the establishment of a Bionic Clinical Board of the three PIs. Here the options of bionic reconstruction will be explored for each patient on a bi-monthly basis, the engineering solutions will be adapted to the clinical challenges, and patients will be identified who best profit from the radical new developments of Natural BionicS.
Champ scientifique
Mots‑clés
Programme(s)
Thème(s)
Régime de financement
ERC-SyG - Synergy grantInstitution d’accueil
SW7 2AZ LONDON
Royaume-Uni