Autonomous Mobile Gait Training Robot for Orthopedic Rehabilitation in a Clinical Environment

Successful rehabilitation after surgery in hip endoprosthetics comprises self-training of the lessons taught by physiotherapists. While doing so, immediate feedback to the patient about deviations from physiological gait patterns during training is very beneficial. In the research project ROGER, a mobile socially assistive robot (SAR), which supports patients after surgery in hip endoprosthetics during their self-training, was developed. The robot employs task-specific, user-centered navigation and autonomous, real-time gait feature classification techniques to enrich the self-training through companionship and timely corrective feedback. This paper presents technical and usability results obtained during four weeks of user tests at our partner hospital "Waldkliniken Eisenberg" in Germany.