The Rehabilitation Engineering Lab (RELab) at the Department of Health Sciences and Technology at ETH Zurich is an interdisciplinary group with competencies in mechanical and electrical engineering, movement science, neurorehabilitation and neuroscience. The RELab uses robotics, wearable sensor technologies, and non-invasive neuroimaging to explore, assess and restore sensorimotor function in persons with neurological injury, to promote sensorimotor recovery and independence.

Together with the Centre for Digital Health Interventions, the RELab is working on developing an AI-based digital tool to support unsupervised and remote technology-assisted rehabilitation after neurological injuries, intending to revisit current neurorehabilitation models. RehabCoach will take the form of an interactive smartphone-​based app that can act as an intermediate layer between patients, healthcare professionals and rehabilitation technologies. Functions will include support with unsupervised therapy plans and setting daily goals, reminders to the user via text messages, and an artificial-​intelligence-based chat function. Further, the app will provide access to information and collect data via questionnaires and metrics related to app use.

Publications

1. Devittori, G., Akeddar, M., Retevoi, A., Schneider, F., Cvetkova, V., Dinacci, D., Califfi, A., Rossi, P., Petrillo, C., Kowatsch, T., Lambercy, O. (2024) Towards RehabCoach: Design and Preliminary Evaluation of a Conversational Agent Supporting Unsupervised Therapy after Stroke, In Proc. of IEEE RAS EMBS 10th International Conference on Biomedical Robotics and Biomechatronics (BioRob 2024), 1-4 September 2024 Heidelberg, Germany.
2. Retevoi, A., Devittori, G., Kowatsch, T., Lambercy, O., Building Conversational Agents for Stroke Rehabilitation: An Evaluation of Large Language Models and Retrieval Augmented Generation (2024) In Proc. 24th ACM International Conference on Intelligent Virtual Agents (IVA), September 16-19, Glasgow, UK.

Designing a digital tool for unsupervised and remote rehabilitation after neurological injuries.

Prof. Dr Tobias Kowatsch

Dr Olivier Lambercy, Senior Scientist at the Rehabilitation Engineering Laboratory (RELab) at D-​HEST

October 2022 – March 2026 (RehabCoach 1 and 2)

September 2022: Grant awarded to RehabCoach