Next-generation tele-operated robots can be hacked

Washington: If you feel that your car`s remote-controlled security system is full-proof, you may be wrong as a team of engineers has shown how easily a malicious attack could hijack remotely-controlled operations in the future.
A team of engineers from the University of Washington demonstrated that next generation tele-operated robots using non-private networks can be easily disrupted or derailed by common forms of cyber attacks.
Incorporating security measures to foil those attacks will be critical to their safe adoption and use.
"We want to make the next generation of telerobots resilient to some of the threats we`ve detected without putting an operator or patient or any other person in the physical world in danger," said lead author Tamara Bonaci, a University of Washington doctoral candidate in electrical engineering.
The team mounted common types of cyberattacks as study participants used a tele-operated surgical robot to move rubber blocks between pegs on a pegboard.
During denial-of-service attacks, in which the attacking machine flooded the system with useless data, the robots became jerky and harder to use.
With a single packet of bad data, for instance, the team was able to maliciously trigger the robot`s emergency stop mechanism, rendering it useless.
"If there`s been a disaster, the network has probably been damaged too. So you might have to fly a drone and put a router on it and send signals up to it," said Howard Chizeck, UW professor of electrical engineering.
Encrypting data packets that flow between the robot and human operator would help prevent certain types of cyberattacks.
The study was presented at the 6th ACM/IEEE I

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Robots help stroke victims regain use of arms

Introduced two decades ago for patients with neurological disorders, rehabilitation robotics is now a relatively widespread recovery method for patients.

At the National Hospital for Neurology and Neurosurgery in London, robots are used to help stroke victims regain the use of their arms.

Exoskeletons are attached to computer games specially designed to exercise specific sets of upper body muscles. At least 500 repetitions of a movement are needed to make any lasting change.

“It adds variety to the rehabilitation that they’re receiving which adds interest, and patients need to focus on what they’re doing and they need to concentrate again in order to change to affect plasticity,” says Fran Brander, a clinical physiotherapist at the NHNN in London.

“But it’s not the be all and end all. We couldn’t just buy six robots and have no therapists, or nobody to do the hands-on stuff, because the robot won’t lengthen tight muscles, it won’t know which are the specifically weak muscles that need strengthening.”

Before starting the exercise, the patient’s ability to move his or her arm is fed into the computer. If they are unable to move their arm, the robot moves it for them. If they start to move, the robot provides adjustable levels of assistance to help out, helping the brain and arm to learn to work together again.

“You forget what the arm can do when it hasn’t been used for some time. So they teach you new skills and put you on this upper hand clinic (clinical device) to encourage you to be able to use the right arm again,” explains one patient.

While the introduction of such devices doesn’t mean traditional physiotherapy is no longer needed, it can leave the most repetitive exercises to machines, freeing up more time for other, more complex tasks by humans.

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