Enhancing Recovery of Sensorimotor Functions: The Role of Robot Generated Haptic Feedback in the Re-learning Process

The term Robotic Rehabilitation defines a class of machines employed for different scenarios, ranging from therapeutic and assistive applications to robots devoted to neuroscience, behavioral research, and cognitive aspects. The first use of such technology dates back to early 1990s, with a relatively long history and it remains linked to the idea that robots, even with a certain degree of autonomy, must be directly controlled by humans while the interaction must be opportunely regulated in order to promote motor recovery or independent living. These devices are designed for individuals with neuromotor and cognitive disabilities to provide rehabilitative exercises or assistance for activity of daily living. They are also measurement systems i.e. they can incorporate sensors for monitoring kinematic and kinetic interaction with subjects such as movement, force or inertial sensors, or for detecting EMG signals to trigger the assistance or to provide – in more complex architectures – Functional Electric Stimulation (FES) to promote motor activity. In this chapter we will focus on therapeutic robots, which are usually employed to perform rehabilitation protocol, describing in details the most widely used control architectures, the implementation of rehabilitation exercises to restore specific motor functions and the measures of the corresponding performance.