Clinical-Based, Task-Specific and Subject-Oriented Approaches Essential to Effective Robotics Rehabilitation

Abstract

The special issue of Advanced Robotics deals with clinical-based, task-specific and subject-oriented approaches essential to effective robotics rehabilitation of patients suffering from spinal cord injury (SCI) and stroke. Robotic rehabilitation training leads to a loss of physical interactions between the therapist and the patient. Bio-feedback is a necessary consideration in addition to robotic gait training to overcome this challenge in effective robotics rehabilitation of patients. It can provide an online feedback about the patients' performance to the training and allow the patient and the therapist to assess the walking performance. The rehabilitation, the integration of robot-aided training with biofeedback needs to incorporate a number of features and outcomes to provide an effective robotic rehabilitation. One of the papers from the special issue on gait rehabilitation introduces an overground gait rehabilitation robot, integrating three modules, such as robotic orthosis, pelvic arm, and mobile platform.