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 able to perceive the external world and reason about high-level control decisions, however, seldom is present in these machines. For functional tasks in particular, autonomy could help to decrease the operational burden on the human and perhaps even to increase access-and this potential only grows as human motor impairments become more severe. There are however serious, and often subtle, considerations to introducing clinically-feasible robotics autonomy to rehabilitation robots and machines. Today the fields of robotics autonomy and rehabilitation robotics are largely separate. The topic of this article is at the intersection of these fields: the introduction of clinically-feasible autonomy solutions to rehabilitation robots, and opportunities for autonomy within the rehabilitation domain.