CONTACT FORCE PROBLEM IN THE REHABILITATION ROBOT CONTROL DESIGN

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 humanhuman 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.