CAREN systems in CANADA

August 2002 MOTEK has successfully completed the first stage in the installations of three CAREN systems in the province of QUEBEC in CANADA.

The project is in partnership with a consortium that includes:

• IRDPQ: L'Institut de Réadaptation en Déficience Physique de Quebec
• HJR: Jewish Rehabilitation Hospital
• IRM: Institute de Readaptation de Montreal

Those Institutes are associated and working together with:
The McGill University
The University of Montreal and
the University of Laval.

The installations of CAREN marks the start of an effort to introduce High resolution Virtual reality technology.
It involves:

• Immersive, reactive virtual environments in medical research pertaining to rehabilitation techniques
• Advanced research into the central control mechanisms in Humans
• Parallel sensory inputs and feedback loops that includes vestibular, visual and auditory stimuli.

Phase two of the project is planned to commence in September 2002.

Next to the current D-flow compatibility to high-end motion capture systems like the Vicon™, which is used by MOTEK, the Canadian projects also include enhanced versions of D-flow, achieving compatibility with Optotrak systems, Force plates and other peripheral medical research devices.

CAREN is installed also in the Netherlands at the Rijks Universiteit Groningen (RUG) and at the Technische Universiteit Twente (TU).

CAREN Computer Assisted Rehabilitation Environments operation in Real-Time domain. CAREN concerns the development of a virtual reality system in which the balance behaviour of humans can be tested in a variety of reproducible conditions. CAREN helps subjects to overcome balance disorders with virtual reality.