Restorative rehabilitation robotics to promote function, independence and dignity: users’ perspectives on clinical applications

People with mobility impairments have reported that improving their walking is one of the most important goals of their rehabilitation. Novel robotic technologies using powered exoskeletons for the lower limb could potentially offer efficient and less labour-intensive approaches to rehabilitation with shorter recovery times. To gather users’ and carers’ perspectives of assistive device use to provide information to design personalised and safe mobility rehabilitation technology. Semi-structured interviews were carried out with people with experience of mobility impairments. Iterative data collection was used to gather information about the social phenomena surrounding patient interaction and requirements for assistive devices for mobility impairments. Cycles of continuous data collection and thematic analysis using a theoretical, semantic approach was used to develop key themes within the data. We interviewed eight people: six people with mobility impairments and two carers. We identified five main themes: relationship with assistive technology, requirements for assistive technology, function and goal setting, personal factors to assistive device use and psychosocial factors to assistive device use. There was variability in the importance placed on each theme, particularly in the trade-off between the function and comfort of assistive technology. Patients emphasised the need for assistive technology to be personalised; they reported the ability to stand, control spasticity and involvement in community roles as key goals of their rehabilitation. These results highlight the variation in requirements for assistive technology between people with different mobility impairments; individuals’ experiences are unique and future prototypes need to account for different levels of impairments and personal goals. These findings will also inform the user evaluation stage of assistive device testing. The acceptability of assistive devices is dependent upon a number of factors, including personalisation, comfort and function. Future pilot studies should gather qualitative data to determine the acceptability of actual device use.