A Multimodal Human Sensory System to support Mobile Gait Rehabilitation

In a dynamic operational environment of human-robot interaction, awareness of the interacting human state and activity is essential to the decision making of the robotic system. We present our approach by illustrating its application in a particularly challenging context of human-robot co-working supported by our Human Sensory System, for measuring physiological data during robot-assisted gait rehabilitation, which provides sensors and infrastructure to measure the physiological data. This data is used by a Situation Assessment Architecture in the monitoring the human state, activity and performance to aid the process of gait rehabilitation. Both the Human Sensory System and the Situation Assessment Architecture have been developed as part of the CORBYS project, in which a mobile robotic gait rehabilitation system demonstrator has been developed. The Human Sensory System consists of three sensor module types; i) a Chest Unit collecting one-lead ECG, heart rate and skin temperature measurements, ii) an IsenseU unit equipped to measure humidity and inertial movements and iii) an EMG measurement unit. Synchronised sensor readings are transmitted wirelessly formatted as standardised Robot Operating System (ROS) data from the Human Sensory System controller. This enables a seamless sharing of physiological data with the Situation Assessment Architecture, robotics control and end-user graphical interfaces.