Control Strategies and Artificial Intelligence in Rehabilitation Robotics

Rehabilitation robots physically support and guide a patient's limb during motor therapy, but require sophisticated control algorithms and artificial intelligence to do so. This article provides an overview of the state of the art in this area. Furthermore, it describes exercise adaptation algorithms that change the overall exercise intensity based on the patient's performance or physiological responses, as well as socially assistive robots that provide only verbal and visual guidance. The article concludes with a discussion of the current challenges in rehabilitation robot software: evaluating existing control strategies in a clinical setting as well as increasing the robot's autonomy using entirely new artificial intelligence techniques.