A Framework for the User-Centered Design of Personalized Hybrid Wearable Robots for Gait Rehabilitation

This book provides an in-depth framework for developing personalized hybrid wearable robots to restore walking ability after neurological injuries. Leveraging both data available in the literature and new ones arising from the presented study, it summarizes a set of criteria for guiding design, development, and evaluation of these robotic devices to meet user’s needs. At first, it describes a user-centered approach for designing such devices, in turn it defines novel, comprehensive metrics to monitor gait function during robot-assisted training and after rehabilitation, deriving them from studies on spinal cord injury gait kinematics. Further, it reports on the development and application of experimental protocols for tailoring assistance and on the implementation of a usability evaluation tool to enhance device acceptance and effectiveness.