Rehabilitation robotics for outpatient clinical and domestic use

Robotic systems for rehabilitation have found acceptance in therapeutic and clinical environment. The main successes are made in support or substitution of manual therapy for locomotion and reaching using stationary multi degree of freedom robotic systems. These systems present a technological complexity that requires constant maintenance and highly qualified operators. They are only affordable by big rehabilitation centers and clinics. On the other hand research results indicate that successful rehabilitation requires more involvement and time of the impaired subjects than the duration of their hospitalization. Outpatient treatments and the continuation of the therapy in local and smaller rehabilitation facilities or at home should follow the clinical rehabilitation. Current challenges are the implementation of affordable rehabilitation robotics in outpatient centers and the development of low cost solutions for domestic environments. This paper presents contributions that use solutions necessary for lower cost rehabilitation robotic systems, i.e. low-cost compliant actuators, sensors, controls, existing gaming controllers, remote support and supervising. New approaches and systems for domestic and tele-rehabilitation, tele-rehabilitation software solutions, low cost training platforms, and workstations are presented and described.