Recipient organisationVidyasirimedhi Institute of Science and Technology
Funding£25K
PeriodMar 2025 — Mar 2026
In plain English
AI plain-English summary
Over 4 million people in Thailand live with physical disabilities, most from stroke, spinal cord injury, or age-related muscle weakness, and over 95% of them are in rural areas with little access to rehabilitation or assistive devices. This project creates a new UK-Thailand research partnership to design smarter, more comfortable assistive technologies. The collaboration brings together soft robotics experts from the University of Bristol, AI specialists from Thailand’s Vidyasirimedhi Institute of Science and Technology, and physiotherapists from Chulalongkorn University. They will hold workshops and exchanges to generate ideas for devices that are both physically comfortable and intelligently responsive to a user’s movements and needs. If successful, the work could lead to lightweight robotic braces or exoskeletons that adapt to individual users, controlled by AI that learns their movement patterns. These would be designed for low-cost production and acceptance in communities where current medical devices are too expensive or impractical. The partnership also aims to secure larger joint grants, building a long-term research pipeline between the two countries. The ultimate goal is to turn co-developed ideas into trustworthy, adaptable devices that help people regain mobility and independence.
View original technical description
Over 4 million people are experiencing physical disabilities in Thailand with the majority suffering from mobility impairments. The main causes are ageing-related muscle weakness, stroke, brain or spinal cord injuries due to road traffic accidents, and traumas from heavy manual work. Disability in Thailand leads to loss of work, poverty and living dependence. Medical treatments, rehabilitation facilities, and access to assistive devices are limited disproportionately in the rural and poorer communities where over 95% of disabled people in Thailand live. These combined factors result in unsustainable and unmet welfare and significantly reduced living quality of people with disabilities. This project will establish a new UK-Thai collaboration to generate innovative research ideas for advancing assistive and rehabilitative technology. Through networking events, meetings, visits, and workshops in both countries, we will foster knowledge exchange and skill transfer. We have brought together healthcare leaders with all necessary multidisciplinary expertise, including advanced soft robotics for comfortable medical devices (University of Bristol), artificial intelligence for intelligent human-centred control (Vidyasirimedhi Institute of Science and Technology), and specialists in physiotherapy and sports science for use-case analysis (Chulalongkorn University). This exciting collaboration will not only identify groundbreaking solutions to pressing healthcare challenges and stimulate technology advancement in Thailand, but it also lays the groundwork for a strong UK-Thai partnership to pursue larger collaborative research grants. Our ultimate goal is to translate our co-developed research ideas into innovative medical devices with high adaptability, technology acceptance, and trustworthiness, empowering individuals with efficient assistance and rehabilitation for improved health and well-being.
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