Autonomy in Rehabilitation Robotics: An Intersection

Within the field of human rehabilitation, robotic machines are used both to rehabilitate the body and to perform functional tasks. Robotics autonomy that would enable perception of the external world and reasoning about high-level control decisions, however, is seldom present in these machines. For functional tasks in particular, autonomy could help to decrease the operational burden on the human and perhaps even increase access, and this potential only grows as human motor impairments become more severe. There are, however, serious and often subtle considerations for incorporating clinically feasible robotics autonomy into rehabilitation robots and machines. Today, the fields of robotics autonomy and rehabilitation robotics are largely separate, and the topic of this article is at the intersection of these fields: the incorporation of clinically feasible autonomy solutions into rehabilitation robots and the opportunities for autonomy within the rehabilitation domain.