Individual Goal Setting and Motivational Aspects in Robot Guided Neuro-rehabilitation: a Clinical Analysis

Biomedical engineers meticulously incorporated knowledge of motor control and learning in their rehabilitation robots. In most cases this has led to sophisticated machines with the capability to measure quantitatively particular events in patients and train them according to some biomechanical or neurological rules. Overall, patients like these instruments because they are new, but boredom is never far away because the motivational aspects are limited to a gain in score or allowance to a higher (game) level. Seldom, an emotional link that directly propels the patient to achievements of daily living goals is observable. This article describes in a first part a schematic approach covering individual goal setting, adapted rehabilitation oriented feature extraction and intrinsic motivation of the patient. In a second part, existing robots are confronted with the proposed paradigm and it is shown that conflicting goal setting is often the cause for a limited outward going motivation. A last part formulates some guidelines for further technical developments in the discussed field