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...luding stroke rehabilitation which is the focus of the current paper. In one instance, robots are programmed to socially interact with stroke patients in order to verbally encourage the patients [9], =-=[10]-=-. The role of robots, in this setting, is to help the patients persist in selfdriven therapeutic activities prescribed by physical therapists. In another example, a humanoid robot is programmed to phy...

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...lacci are with AOUP Cisanello, Neurorehabilitation Unit, Pisa, Italy c.chisari@ao-pisa.toscana.it, chiarafanciullacci@alice.it Danilo Menicucci is with The Institute of Clinical Physiology, CNR, Pisa, Italy danilo.menicucci@gmail.com Silvestro Micera is with The Biorobotics Institute, Scuola Superiore Sant’Anna, Pisa, Italy and the Neural Translation group, EPFL, Lausanne, Switzerland s.micera@sssup.it bilitative treatment [14], [21]. Indeed robots may potentially conjugate the effectiveness of neuro-rehabilitative treatments and cost reduction, particularly if coupled with home-based therapy [23], [12], [11], [14]. Although consensus has not been reached yet on this score [18], [17], determining the clinical outcome of robotic-rehabilitated post-stroke patients with respect to the one elicited by traditional therapies is a matter worth investingating. Consequently much effort is being devoted to robotic-assisted therapy [15], [22], [18], [9]. Though upper-limb rehabilitation is relatively easy, lowerlimb rehabilitation constitutes more of a challenge. This is mainly due to the therapists’ required effort to set the paretic limbs and to control the weight shift [2] but also to the diff...