SERAC project: applications of robotics to physical rehabilitation (preliminary results)

Medical robotics is an emerging area within bioengineering and clinical medicine. Medical robots are being used more and more to assist in a variety of surgical and clinical settings, and the application of medical robotics to the rehabilitative sciences seems to be growing within the literature. Here, the authors explore using a robotic articulation to assist in the treatment of dysfunctional human movement of the upper and lower extremities. They describe their approach and the resulting prototype, and they examine other current research efforts in which robotics is being applied in a rehabilitative setting. Future work on the prototypes being developed at Multi-Dimensional Movement Systems is discussed.