Overview

One overarching goal drives our research and development activities: to revolutionize rehabilitation medicine with robotics, mechatronics, and information technologies that can assist movement, enhance treatment and quantify outcomes. In this chapter, we present three fronts of this revolution: rehabilitation robotics, orthotics, and prosthetics.

The first and newest approach, rehabilitation robotics, has grown significantly in the last 10 years (cf. special issue of the Journal of Rehabilitation Research and Development, 37(6) of Nov/Dec 2000; International Conference on Rehabilitation Robotics – ICORR 2001, 2003 and 2005). Previously, robotics were incorporated into assistive devices to help the physically challenged accommodate their impairment. Rehabilitation robotics, by contrast, fashions a new class of interactive and user-friendly robots that enhance the clinicians' goal of facilitating recovery by not only evaluating but also by delivering measured therapy to patients. Krebs and Hogan review pioneering clinical results in the field, discuss the growing pains of forging a novel technology, and outline the potential for a brilliant future.

Of the other two activities, we will limit our discussion to mechatronic systems. Orthotics and prosthetics may be considered as a category of assistive robotics. While the previous high water mark for mechatronic assistive technology occurred during the Vietnam War decades of 1960s and 1970s, recent advancements in materials, computers, and neuroconnectivity (neuro-prostheses) have reinvigorated research in this field. In fact, the lack of equivalent advances in realm of energy storage represents the only major hurdle preventing the realization of practical versions of Hollywood's fancies such as Star Trek's Commander Data or the Terminator.