Wearable Sensors and Soft Robotics

In the last decades, the use of electronic devices in rehabilitation has increased rapidly, also due to the possibilities of applying new scientific discoveries in terms of improving clinical outcomes and patient involvement in rehabilitation treatment. The miniaturization of the components, the possibility of adaptation to the variable conformation of the human body, and the growing interest in the possibility of monitoring biological signals, has allowed the development of wearable technologies, which allow the paradigms of treatment in neurorehabilitation to be redesigned. Soft robotics is a field of robotics that deals with the production of devices made of flexible structures and materials, adaptable to any shape and segment of the human body. These devices can be suitable for a wide range of neurorehabilitation applications, since they can be lightweight, compact, and portable, enabling patients to undergo therapy in different settings. Given the complexity of the possible rehabilitation treatments, the current clinical evaluation scales are not sufficient to outline the patient’s characteristics from a temporal-spatial and performance point of view. The use of sensors, in particular the wearable ones, allows the real-time acquisition of large quantities of data, which allow better monitoring of the patient and the possibility of planning a highly personalized rehabilitation treatment for the patient. The future perspectives of this multimodal approach to the patient with central nervous system damage foresee the portability of these devices at home, preserving the accuracy of the multiparametric analysis, exploiting the analysis potential of artificial intelligence.