Humanoids Meet Rehabilitation - Concept and Potential

Abstract

The development of humanoids is receiving attention in the bioengineering and health care communities, due to the high potential of bio-inspired robotics to serve as test bed of motor control theories. To this aim, Neurorobotics is gaining relevance as a way to translate the biological principles into “intelligent” machines. The result of this process is twofold: i) validating the biomechanical and neural control principles found in humans, and ii) developing more effective rehabilitation devices and strategies. In this paper, some of the main challenges of this process will be presented, with particular emphasis on the implications in diagnostic and rehabilitation of walking. As a first step in this direction, the European project H2R aims at developing a humanoid that includes the most relevant biological principles of human locomotion and posture. This new neurorobot is expected to result in a versatile test bed of future neurorehabilitation