HaptiNet: Networked Haptic Robots Enable Physical Co-presence in Geographically-Unconstrained Rehabilitation
Cooperative rehabilitation enhances engagement, task performance, and social-motor interaction, yet it demands physical co-presence: users must transmit forces, coordinate movements, and infer intent through haptic contact. Telerehabilitation promises to expand access for patients constrained by distance, mobility, or clinical disparities, yet current techniques remain predominantly audiovisual while leaving users haptically and physically isolated. Here, we introduce HaptiNet, a networked haptic robotic system enabling physical co-presence for geographically distributed users via force-mediated interaction. Each robotic terminal features a low-inertia, long-stroke design with high force-feedback capacity, tailored for haptic rendering in upper-limb training. Building on these terminals, HaptiNet creates a distributed haptic network with an imitation-learning-based delay compensator, enabling users to physically perceive and coordinate with one another over distance. We validated HaptiNet in 284 healthy participants and 111 patients with neurological impairments across progressively realistic settings, including laboratory tests, cross-city deployments, and clinical applications. HaptiNet preserved task-level force rendering consistency across single-user and multi-user scenarios. Compared with solo and visual cooperative training, haptic cooperation improved task performance by 24% and 22%, respectively, while also boosting engagement and interpersonal motor synchrony. Across three intercity links totaling approximately 4,000 km, HaptiNet maintained stable haptic interaction among patients with neurological impairments, producing a 3.87-fold greater baseline-to-training score improvement and a 106% higher patient-applied effort over the solo condition.