A skilled physiotherapist can get your body working again after an injury, but even they can’t see your inner workings while you’re rebuilding muscle. So a team of researchers from Saitama University have developed a rehabilitation machine that generates a virtual representation of the muscles in your arm letting you, and your physician, see them in motion.
The machine, dubbed R-cloud, uses haptic feedback, sensors that measure actual muscle contraction, and augmented reality to track the motion of the patient’s arm, and then recreate the muscles in 3D on a nearby display.
Working through a debilitating injury requires as much mental recovery as it does physical, and being able to actually see their muscles in motion — stretching and contracting — should provide patients with encouragement to keep pushing themselves. It also gives physiotherapists a better idea of how the muscles in the arm are moving — and to what extent — so they can avoid overexertion. [DigInfo TV]