Mobile Robotic Rehabilitation Assistant for walking and orientation training of Stroke Patients: A report on work in progress

As report on work in progress, this paper describes the objectives and the current state of implementation of the ongoing research project ROREAS (Robotic Rehabilitation Assistant for Stroke Patients), which aims at developing a robotic rehabilitation assistant for walking and orientation exercising in self-training during clinical stroke follow-up care. This requires strongly user-centered, polite and attentive social navigation and interaction behaviors that can motivate the patients to start, continue, and regularly repeat their self-training. Against this background, the paper gives an overview of the constraints and requirements arising from the rehabilitation scenario and the operational environment, a heavily populated multi-level rehabilitation center, and presents the robot platform ROREAS which is currently used for developing the demonstrators (walking coach and orientation coach). Moreover, it gives an overview of the robot´s functional system architecture and presents selected advanced navigation and HRI functionalities required for a personal robotic trainer that can successfully operate in such a challenging real-world environment, up to the results of ongoing functionality tests and upcoming user studies.