Intelligent Systems for Rehabilitation Engineering

1Different Spheres of Rehabilitation Robotics: A Brief Survey Over the Past Three Decades

Saumyadip Hazra, Abhimanyu Kumar, Yashonidhi Srivastava and Souvik Ganguli^*

Department of Electrical and Instrumentation Engineering, Thapar Institute of Engineering and Technology, Punjab, India

Abstract

Robots have been widely applied in the medical field to aid various surgeries and different therapies, to assist movement for patients with physical disabilities, etc. Although some review works have been carried out, trends and applications deliberated, and future of rehabilitation robotics has been forecasted, yet a consolidated survey was missing in the literature. The objective of this survey is to present a review of the rehabilitation robots, which will also open the reader to understand futuristic applications in this domain. Several researchers worked on the integrated architecture of human beings and robots with cognitive skills. The application of rehabilitation robots in orthotics and prosthetics has also been significant. The use of sensing technology in rehabilitation robots has also been addressed. Further, the scenario of rehabilitation robotics in Europe and the northern part of America is also highlighted in this work.

Keywords: Rehabilitation robotics, assistance robots, neurological disorders, prosthetics, exo-skeleton, smart robotics

1.1 Introduction

Several researchers have contributed [1] to robotics applications in surgery, rehabilitation [2, 3], neurological disorders ...