24 October 2025, Venue 103A

Design and Development of Rehabilitation Robotic Devices: Healthcare Challenges

@ 2025 IEEE/RSJ International Conference on Intelligent Robots and Systems

Hangzhou, China

Outline and Objectives

Design and development of engineering systems for healthcare has been a challenge both for engineers and healthcare personnel due to the differences in disciplines and mindset of engineers and clinicians. On one side, the engineers might not be well-informed about the application context and human factors in using the equipment, might not be familiar with patient preferences, and might not anticipate the day-to-day and subjective variations in use of equipment. On the other side, clinicians might not be aware of the available technical provisions and flexibilities and might not be familiar with alternative technical solutions which could easily address their needs. This tutorial focuses on robotic rehabilitation devices in healthcare highlighting the challenges in their design and will discuss design methodologies that capture the healthcare specific requirements and inform the engineering processes with the healthcare notions.

Key Topics

The tutorial will be enriched with keynote talks, hands-on tutorials, selected oral and poster presentations on design methodology and experiences of design applied to rehabilitation robotics. The tutorial will:

1. Introduce a new design approach for rehabilitation robots that incorporates interdisciplinary methods and fosters collaboration among multiple stakeholders.

2. Introduce the concepts of physical and cognitive human-robot interfaces for wearable robots, along with ergonomic design principles of wearable robots for movement assistance and rehabilitation.

3. Share the experiences of the co-design work run by the UK-wide project EMERGENCE with physio and occupational therapists.

4. Discuss a minimalistic approach towards designing, developing and validating rehabilitation robots to reduce complexities and costs for realistic translation to clinical practice.

Program

09:00 – 09:05: Event opening

09:05 – 09:20: Tutorial 1: Purpose-centred Design of Rehabilitation Robots: a Novel Design Methodology – Hao Yu

09:20 – 09:55: Keynote Talk 1: An Overview of the Co-design Work Run by the UK-wide Project EMERGENCE with Physio and Occupational Therapists – Cian O'Donovan (5 mins Q&A)

09:55 – 10:10: Selected Talk 1: Human-in-the-loop optimisation in robot-assisted gait training – Andreas Christou

10:10 – 10:40: Coffee Break and Poster Session

10:40 – 11:10: Tutorial 2: Ergonomic Design of Exoskeletons for Movement Assistance and Rehabilitation – Emilio Trigili

11:10 – 11:45: Keynote Talk 2: Rehabilitation Robotics: Made as Simple as Possible, but Not Simpler – Sivakumar Balasubramanian (5 mins Q&A)

11:45 – 12:00: Selected Talk 2: Toward Robotic Transvaginal Clinical Examination: Requirement Analysis and Investigation of Gynecologists’ Experimental Skills – Kenya Mori

12:00 – 13:00: Hands-on Sessions in Parallel

Hands-on Session #1: Experience with a Hand-Exoskeleton for Spasticity Assessment – Hao Yu

Hands-on Session #2: Design and Implementation of a Simulator Interacting with a Physical Elbow Exoskeleton – Michele Francesco Penna

Instructions for Posters:

Posters should be a maximum size of 4ft x 4ft or 122 cm x 122 cm. Therefore, we recommend the A0 poster size in portrait orientation. Our meeting room will be 103A. Poster boards will be in the same room. Poster boards will be labeled with the name of our workshop.
Poster sessions will be during the coffee breaks (10:10-10:40am).

Selected Posters

Yohan Yoon: Bistable Anchor for Easy Donning & Doffing of Robotic Gloves
Andreas Christou: Human-in-the-loop optimisation in robot-assisted gait training
Ibrahim A. Seleem: Reconfigurable Pneumatic Soft Actuators for Wrist Rehabilitation
Claudia D. Rocha: AI-Care4U: AI-based robotic solution addressing compensatory patterns for upper limb rehabilitation
André Fernandes Gonçalves: Electromechanical Human-Robotic Manipulator’s Interface for Upper Limb Rehabilitation
Seunguk Moon: 3D Printing of Sensing Gloves for Quantitative Hand Assessment
Kyu Bum Kim: Exo-Glove Poly III: Assistive Soft Robotic Glove Performing Two Different Grasping Strategies via Slack-based Sequential Actuator
Tsam Lung You: A Skin-electrode Interface Conditioning System for Supporting Daily Electrocardiograpm Monitoring
Kenya Mori: Toward Robotic Transvaginal Clinical Examination: Requirement Analysis and Investigation of Gynecologists’ Experimental Skills