A new gaze-tracking guidance mode for upper limb robot-aided neurorehabilitation

Eye-tracking systems are playing an increasingly important role in assistive robotics as hand-free interaction interfaces for motor impaired people, but no noticeable applications have been developed so far for enhancing the robotic assisted training in functional rehabilitation. In this paper we propose a new gaze-based control to provide active guidance to the upper limb movement, through a robotic exoskeleton, in the functional rehabilitation of pick and place tasks. Experimental results on healthy subjects demonstrate the feasibility of the proposed approach and the breakthrough that the system introduces in the field of eye-based rehabilitation systems.