Wednesday, October 24, 2007

Virtual Rehabilitation 2007 Conference, Venice, Italy

Held in Lido Venice, a small island off the city of Venice, this was certainly a different venue for a conference. On the grounds of the San Camillo hospital, renowned for its pioneering activities in the field of rehabilitation, a tent was setup in an “open concept” fashion with lots of fresh air, and beautiful vegetation. About 150 medical doctors, physiotherapists, engineers, and other health researchers were gathered at Virtual Rehabilitation Conference.

For the event, Quanser teamed up with Teoresi , our distributor in Italy. Product manager Enzo Bergamini from Teoresi, application engineer Michel Levis and channel sales director Martin Lord, both from Quanser, were present at the event.

Our booth was very popular – we had our haptic Telesurgery demonstration system, which included one 6DOF Mirage haptic robot and one 5DOF industrial robot, all controlled from a single PC running Simulink and Quanser’s own WinCon.
The standard demo was to sign one’s name on a sheet of paper secured on a soft sponge, but since we had the right audience, we even experimented with pear surgery!
On video we showed an application of haptics in rehabilitation with a 2DOF robot that we are developing in conjunction with the University of Toronto and the Toronto Rehabilitation Institute. You will certainly hear more about this project in the near future.

A beautiful setting indeed – we hope to come back! “Thank you” to the organizing committee for its support during that event.

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