Emerging robotics devices for therapeutic rehabilitation of the lower extremity

Abstract

Application of robotics in rehabilitation provides various opportunities to improve the quality of daily life of disabled people. Therapy rehabilitation is categorized as cardiopulmonary, neurological and musculoskeletal. This paper focus on rehabilitation robots used for musculoskeletal therapy which assists in strengthening and restoring functionality and improving coordination in the musculoskeletal system. The development of therapy rehabilitation robots in the form of passive and active is reviewed in this paper with regards to the 21 <sup xmlns:mml="http://www.w3.org/1998/Math/MathML" xmlns:xlink="http://www.w3.org/1999/xlink">st</sup> century. Therapy rehabilitation robots are mainly discussed based on different actuation systems, degree of intelligence and virtual reality based rehabilitation robots. The main focus of this paper is to address the impact of the developments in the field of rehabilitation, limitations and challenges faced by current researchers.