mathias wellner

In my relent­less search for arti­cles in the field of reha­bi­li­ta­tion robo­tics, I will publish some com­ments on excel­lent arti­cles. With this I hope to help people who search rele­vant papers and also to find experts in the field for dis­cus­sions and exch­ange. Ever­y­body inte­res­ted in the arti­cles I found may take a look at my arti­cles at CiteU­Like.

My dis­ser­ta­tion is about coope­ra­tive con­trol stra­te­gies for the gait orthe­sis Loko­mat. This field tou­ches the fol­lo­wing sub­ject areas:

1. Reha­bi­li­ta­tion robo­tics (the big term),
2. Con­trol stra­te­gies in general,
3. Varia­ble struc­ture con­trol (swing and stance phase),
4. Coope­ra­tive con­trol stra­te­gies (adap­tive behaviour),
5. Para­me­ter iden­ti­fi­ca­tion (online if possible),
6. Ite­ra­tive learning,
7. Pati­ent model (so far the pati­ent is seen as a dis­tur­bance) and
8. Inter­face con­cept (in the end, the­ra­pists shall use all that with ease).

This post is an expe­ri­ment, since sci­en­tists are so far not using web­logs as a means of exch­ange and dis­cus­sion. At least I don’t know of any. But since I like the idea of web­logs I try to make a start in that and use it for sci­en­ti­fic pur­po­ses. I will publish in English, since that enhan­ces chan­ces to be found by sci­en­tists all over the world.

You won’t believe it, but even here people dis­cuss poli­ti­cal issues con­tro­ver­si­ally. The latest example was the most recent Inter­na­tio­nal Club Cof­fee hour. Last Fri­day I was quite sur­pri­sed to see the ent­ire room fil­led with people. Usually there aren’t that much, but on this day I even had no chance to find a chair. Dis­played was a video about Iraq. Scott Rit­ter, for­mer chief wea­pon inspec­tor in Iraq cri­ti­zi­sed the US govern­ment har­shly for having con­tri­bu­ted a large part of the 1998 expel of wea­pon inspec­tors. He con­clu­ded that it had never been the inte­rest of the US govern­ment to dis­arm Iraq but to pro­voke the esca­la­tion of the con­flict. I mean, this really struck me. The second dis­played speaker was a priest, speaking mainly about the con­se­quen­ces of the embargo. He made the sho­cking com­pa­ri­son that more Iraqi civi­li­ans were kil­led as a result of the embargo than people have died by wea­pons of mass destruction.

Having seen these strong argu­ments against avery inter­ven­tion and against the embargo, the dis­cus­sion was mainly about the role of the media and what could be done. The last ques­tion was espe­cially inte­res­ting, since the day before the Con­gress had pas­sed a reso­lu­tion, allo­wing Bush to use mili­tary means if diplo­ma­tic efforts have fai­led. Yet, a demons­tra­tion in Washing­ton was plan­ned, people were thin­king how to spread the word. Some instruc­tors thought about how to edu­cate their stu­dents. All in all, a large emo­tion against the war lay in the air.

The second event in this direc­tion hap­pened in Michael’s place yes­ter­day. We cooked toge­ther, when one guy, who was there very often, appeared and we began to talk. Since we two were still in a very poli­ti­cal mood, the sub­ject soon tur­ned on Iraq. And sur­pri­sin­gly he had his very ela­bo­ra­ted and unty­pi­cal opi­ni­ons about all that. He used the word impe­ria­lism most often, arguing that all America’s great­ness and power had been achie­ved by ime­ria­listic methods, e.g. eth­ni­cal cle­an­sing of whole Wes­tern Ame­rica, occupa­tion of Hawaii, hel­ping to esta­blish the state of Israel and many more things. He also was very ver­sed about the Huns, who defea­ted Rome. With one par­ent being from Hun­gary he poin­ted out that Hun blood was also in him. Finally we tal­ked about Frank Herbert’s Dune, com­pa­ring the well trai­ned desert figh­ters of AQ to the Fre­men people and oil to Spice. Alt­hough I wasn’t sure if all this fits that very way, it still was abolu­tely inte­res­ting to find an edu­ca­ted and inte­res­ting man like him here.