Towards Software-Enabled Rehabilitation

Software-enabled rehabilitation techniques hold the promise of revolutionizing continuous, at-home, and remote care, both on-going and immediately post-trauma. However, critical challenges arise when automating the schedule of therapy and when automating tasks. Challenges include the software needs for dynamic tasks versus those of static tasks, human-in-the-loop control/safety, and interface design. This note discusses some of these challenges and how they relate to creating simple, inexpensive devices that can be used in various rehabilitation settings. In particular, software design plays a critical role in scaling down the complexity of some types of therapy.