Impedance Control in the Rehabilitation Robotics
Physical interactions between patients and therapists during rehabilitation have served as motivation for the design of rehabilitation robots, yet there is a lack in fundamental understanding of the principles governing such human human interactions. Review of the literature posed important open questions regarding sensorimotor interaction during human human interactions that could facilitate the design of human robot interactions and haptic interfaces for rehabilitation. The goal is to use the leading principles of the human human interaction in order to define a way in which people could be in contact with robots in a more intuitive and biologically inspired way. The proposed hybrid impedance control solves the robot environment contact problem and offers a possible solution for the rehabilitation robot interaction problem.