Low-cost robotics and AI technologies for rehabilitation and health monitoring

This paper reviews robotics technologies applied to rehabilitation. Besides a literature review, selected to highlight relevant topics/aspects, the paper presents a few examples of low cost technologies (which are particularly important in ageing demographics and struggling economies) and discusses applications in the overlap between rehabilitation and regular health monitoring. The purpose of this study is to frame rehabilitation robotics in terms of the existing technologies and to showcase low cost demonstrators with relevance in rehabilitation scenarios. Besides the encouraging results, obtained in real-world tests (a distinctive characteristic of the paper), the role of AI techniques in the development of low cost devices is also highlighted. Moreover, the paper also discusses the influence of human factors in the acceptance and adoption of alternative/disruptive technologies.