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Bambi Roberts Brewer
PhD Student

No longer a member of RI.

Jump to: Research interests | Labs & Groups | Projects | Publications

I am interested in the use of robotic technology for rehabilitation and for assistive devices. I am currently attempting to use visual distortion combined with a force-feedback robot to improve rehabilitation for chronic stroke and traumatic brain injury (TBI) patients. More generally, I am interested in the mechanisms by which people recover after severe injuries and how technology can be used to make this recovery quicker and more complete. I am also interested in how technology can be used to allow more functional independence for permanently impaired patients.

• Neurobotics Laboratory - Investigating neural control of movement, brain-machine interface, and devices for rehabilitation, motor enhancement, and entertainment.

• Feedback Distortion for Rehabilitation - We are developing a virtual environment with a robotic device to extend the strength and mobility of people recovering from strokes.
• Quality of Life Technology Center - QoLT is a unique partnership between Carnegie Mellon and the University of Pittsburgh that brings together a cross-disciplinary team of technologists, clinicians, industry partners, end users, and other stakeholders to create revolutionary technologies that will improve and sustain the quality of life for all people.
• Sensory Transfer Systems for the Sensory Impaired - We are developing a sensory transfer system to assist and enhance the manipulation abilities of the sensory impaired.

Note: This list may not be comprehensive. It contains only those publications in the RI publications database. Entries are listed in reverse chronological order.

• Enhanced Visual Error in a Coordinated Pinching Task
  B.R. Brewer, R. Klatzky, and Y. Matsuoka
  Proceedings of the IEEE Intl. Conference on Robotics and Automation (ICRA '06), May, 2006.

• Visual Feedback Manipulation for Hand Rehabilitation in a Robotic Environment
  B.R. Brewer
  doctoral dissertation, tech. report CMU-RI-TR-06-24, Robotics Institute, Carnegie Mellon University, May, 2006. [Abstract]
  Download: pdf [6630 KB] copyrighted

• Perceptual Limits for a Robotic Rehabilitation Environment Using Visual Feedback Distortion
  B.R. Brewer, M. Fagan, R. Klatzky, and Y. Matsuoka
  IEEE Transactions on Neural Systems and Rehabilitation Engineering, Vol. 13, 2005, pp. 1 - 11. [Abstract]
  Download: pdf [659 KB] copyrighted

• Shaping Synergistic Pinching Patterns with Feedback Distortion in a Virtual Rehabilitation Environment
  Y. Matsuoka, B.R. Brewer, and R. Klatzky
  In The 26th Annual International Conference of the IEEE Engineering in Medicine and Biology Society, September, 2004, pp. 4866 - 4869. [Abstract]
  Download: pdf [449 KB] copyrighted

• Effects of Visual Feedback Distortion for the Elderly and the Motor-Impaired in a robotic Rehabilitation Environment
  B.R. Brewer, R. Klatzky, and Y. Matsuoka
  Proceedings of the 2004 IEEE International Conference on Robotics and Automation (ICRA '04), May, 2004. [Abstract]
  Download: pdf [445 KB] copyrighted

• Feedback Distortion to Increase Strength and Mobility
  B.R. Brewer, R. Klatzky, and Y. Matsuoka
  Proceedings of the Eighth International Conference on Rehabilitation Robotics (ICORR 2003), April, 2003, pp. 258 - 261.
  Download: pdf [250 KB] copyrighted

• Feedback Distortion to Overcome Learned Nonuse: A System Overview
  B.R. Brewer, R. Klatzky, and Y. Matsuoka
  IEEE Engineering in Medicine and Biology, 2003, pp. 1613 - 1616.
  Download: pdf [546 KB] copyrighted