Empowering Patients in Interactive Unity with Machines: Engineering the HAL (Hybrid Assistive Limb) Robotic Rehabilitation System

Abstract

With the development of robotics-based technologies for human healthcare, human–machine interaction is gaining increasing importance, bringing with it ethical considerations, including the impairment of patients and potential risks to their integrity. This study investigates the Cybernics approach to the robotic rehabilitation system HAL (Hybrid Assistive Limb) as a socio-technological conception of human–machine relations. Contrary to common individualistic conceptions, this heterarchic approach to empowerment technologies (ET) builds on an intrinsic relation between human and machine, in which machines are primarily regarded as a supplement and not a threat to impaired humans. This leads to the question of how ET are constructed and legitimized in Japan, and what relationship between humans and machines is envisioned in the context of healthcare. In referencing Society 5.0 as the developmental framework for ET in Japan, the Cybernics approach to ET as employed at the University of Tsukuba and a case study of the HAL system as enabling an interactive unity of human and machine show that the socio-technological conception proposes a capability-oriented approach with built-in ethics, offering a complementary view to prevailing accounts of human–machine relations.