Rehabilitation Engineering Applied to Mobility and Manipulation

Book excerpt: The discipline of rehabilitation engineering draws on a wide range of specialist knowledge, from the biomedical sciences to materials technology. Rehabilitation Engineering Applied to Mobility and Manipulation provides broad background and motivational material to ease readers' introduction to the subject. The book begins with a wide-ranging yet concise introduction to the legislative, technological, testing, and design basis of rehabilitation engineering, followed by the fundamentals of design and materials and a full account of the biomechanics of rehabilitation. Major sections of the book are devoted to various aspects of mobility, including detailed discussion of wheelchair design. Valuable additional material deals with seating, prosthetic devices, robotics, and the often-neglected subject of recreational devices and vehicles. More than a thousand references to the research and review literature put readers in touch with the leading edge of a rapidly growing field.