A review on bio-cooperative control in gait rehabilitation

While gait rehabilitation robots have become increasingly common to automate treadmill training, their efficacy is still controversial. Current robots lack the ability to react compliantly to the user´s voluntary effort and cognitive intention. Bio-cooperative control concepts allow integrating the patient into the control loop as part of the plant rather than seeing him as a source of disturbance. Closed loop control is thereby performed on a physiological and psychological level. In this paper, we review the concept of bio-cooperative control implemented with neurological patients during robot-assisted gait rehabilitation. We highlight its clinical importance and review our work on control strategies that allow bio-cooperative control. We finish by discussing the future potential of bio-cooperative control in rehabilitation robotics.