The concepts represented in this textbook are explored for the first time in assistive and rehabilitation robotics, which is the combination of physical, cognitive, and social human-robot interaction to empower gait rehabilitation and assist human mobility. The aim is to consolidate the methodologies, modules, and technologies implemented in lower-limb exoskeletons, smart walkers, and social robots when human gait assistance and rehabilitation are the primary targets. This book presents the combination of emergent technologies in healthcare applications and robotics science, such as soft robotics, force control, novel sensing methods, brain-computer interfaces, serious games, automatic learning, and motion planning. From the clinical perspective, case studies are presented for testing and evaluating how those robots interact with humans, analyzing acceptance, perception, biomechanics factors, and physiological mechanisms of recovery during the robotic assistance or therapy. Interfacing Humans and Robots for Gait Assistance and Rehabilitation will enable undergraduate and graduate students of biomedical engineering, rehabilitation engineering, robotics, and health sciences to understand the clinical needs, technology, and science of human-robot interaction behind robotic devices for rehabilitation, and the evidence and implications related to the implementation of those devices in actual therapy and daily life applications.

Dr Jan Veneman is employed by Hocoma AG. All other Topic Editors declare no competing interests with regards to the Research Topic subject.

The text discusses fundamental, advanced concepts and applications of robotics and autonomous systems. It further discusses important topics, such as robotics techniques in the manufacturing sector, applications of smart autonomous systems in the healthcare sector, resource optimization in mobile robotics, and smart autonomous transport systems. Features Covers design and application aspects of robotic systems for implementing the concepts of smart manufacturing with reduced human intervention, better accuracy, and enhanced production capacity. Discusses techniques including supervised learning, unsupervised learning, and reinforced learning with real-life examples. Highlights a unified intermodal approach for automated transportation including cars, trucks, ships, and port management. Explains the mechanical design of planetary rovers, and the mechanical design of space manipulators, actuators, and sensors. Presents programming tools and platforms for autonomous robotic systems. The book is primarily written for senior undergraduates, graduate students, and academic researchers in fields including electrical engineering, electronics and communications engineering, computer science and engineering, and automotive engineering.

This book constitutes the refereed proceedings of the 3rd International Conference on Smart Technologies, Systems and Applications, SmartTech-IC 2022, held in Cuenca, Ecuador, in November 16–18, 2022. The 37 full papers included in this book were carefully reviewed and selected from 121 submissions. They were organized in topical sections as follows: Smart Technologies, Smart Systems, Smart Trends and Applications.

Neuro-robotics is one of the most multidisciplinary fields of the last decades, fusing information and knowledge from neuroscience, engineering and computer science. This book focuses on the results from the strategic alliance between Neuroscience and Robotics that help the scientific community to better understand the brain as well as design robotic devices and algorithms for interfacing humans and robots. The first part of the book introduces the idea of neuro-robotics, by presenting state-of-the-art bio-inspired devices. The second part of the book focuses on human-machine interfaces for performance augmentation, which can seen as augmentation of abilities of healthy subjects or assistance in case of the mobility impaired. The third part of the book focuses on the inverse problem, i.e. how we can use robotic devices that physically interact with the human body, in order (a) to understand human motor control and (b) to provide therapy to neurologically impaired people or people with disabilities.