Physical Interaction Methods for Rehabilitation and Assistive Robots

Abstract

With the rapid growth of China's aging and disabled population, researches on rehabilitation and assistive robots have great value to technical study and good prospects for applications. Rehabilitation and assistive robots involve the domain knowledge of neuroscience, biomechanics, robot automatic control, etc., thus are one of the most challenging and most concerned research areas of robotics. As the application contexts of rehabilitation and assistance entail information communication and energy exchange between man and robot, the physical human-robot interaction control method is the key theme. This article briefly introduces the states of the art of neurorehabilitation robots, wearable exoskeletons, and intelligent prostheses, and focuses on the key issues and research priorities in human motion intent detection methods and interaction control methods. Finally, the future development directions are prospected.