Robotic assistance modifies upper limb muscle synergies in healthy people interacting with a planar robotic platform for upper-limb training

Robotic rehabilitation is a commonly-adopted technique which is applied with promising results to restore motor functionality of neurological patients. However, despite promising results were found in the literature, the mechanism underlying robot assistance are not well known and understood yet. In this study, we adopt a standard paradigm for upper-limb rehabilitation (a planar device developed in our Institute) to investigate the effect of human-robot interaction in healthy people with kinematics and muscle synergies with the aim of translating our results to support of clinical practice.