Application scenarios for assistive robots based on in-depth focus group interviews and clinical expert meetings

Innovative assistive robotic modules are developed based on the inputs obtained from the user candidates and clinical experts during the entire robot development process. This paper presents scenarios developed for examining applications of activities of daily living support robotic modules. We conducted an in-depth analysis of the feedback received from the focus group and clinical expert interviews and constructed 16 scenarios for an end-effector-based upper-limb robot, an exoskeleton upper-limb robot, a smart mobile walker, and a low-limb exoskeleton robot. The major candidate populations for using the above robotic systems are elderly people, stroke survivors, people with spinal cord injuries, and people with myopathy.