Review of Recent Research Trends in Assistive Technologies for Rehabilitation Mohammad O. A. Aqel a , Ahmed Issa a , Abeer A. Elsharif b , Suad Ghaben c , Y. S. M. Alajerami d a Engineering Department, Faculty of EIT b Information Technology Department, Faculty of EIT c Physiotherapy Department, Faculty of AMS d Medical Radiology Department, Faculty of AMS Al Azhar University – Gaza Gaza, Palestine m.aqel@alazhar.edu.ps, a.issa@alazhar.edu.ps, abeer.elsharif91@gmail.com, s.ghaben@alazhar.edu.ps, yasser_ajr@hotmail.com Hassan Khalaf El-Wafa Medical Rehabilitation and Specialized Surgery Hospital Gaza, Palestine hassan.khalaf@gmail.com Taleb Alrayyes Department of Mechanical Engineering, Faculty of Engineering The Islamic University of Gaza Gaza, Palestine talrayyes@iugaza.edu.ps Daniel Bratanov Faculty of Public Health and Health Care University of Ruse “Angel Kanchev” Ruse, Bulgaria dmbratanov@uni-ruse.bg Mojca Debeljak University Rehabilitation Institute Ljubljana, Slovenia mojca.debeljak@ir-rs.si Dermot Brabazon I-Form, School of Mechanical and Manufacturing Engineering Dublin City University Dublin, Ireland dermot.brabazon@dcu.ie Abstract—Globally, there is more than half a billion disabled people due to physical, mental, or sensory deficiencies. Rehabilitation technologies help people with disabilities become more self-reliant and able to participate and integrate into work, school, social environments, or their everyday life more easily through the use of rehabilitation and assistive technologies. Assistive technologies are any hardware or software products designed to help people with disabilities to conserve or recover their functioning and improve their independence, leading to promotion of their well-being. This paper presents a review of state-of-the-art assistive technologies, their types, applications, selection criteria, challenges, and how can they be used in rehabilitation. Moreover, the paper sheds the light on the recent and promising research trends in the fields of knowledge that constitute rehabilitation engineering and assistive technologies. Keywords—Rehabilitation; Disability; Assistive Technologies; Assistive Devices. I. INTRODUCTION As indicated by WHO, around 15% of the population around the world experience some disability, and 2-4% of them lives with huge difficulties in functioning [1-3]. People who have difficulty in carrying out their daily life functional activities such as walking, speech, hearing, and seeing, are considered people with non-severe disability [4]. People who are not able to perform one of their daily living activities are considered people with severe disabilities. Rehabilitation technologies assist disabled people becoming more independent in performing their daily life activities through assistive technologies [1, 5]. Many individuals with mental or physical disabilities have not had the option to live an ordinary life until assistive technologies have emerged. According to the 2018 World Health Organization (WHO) report [6] more than one billion people in the world need Assistive Technology (AT), and only One in Ten have access to the products they need. By 2030, such huge number would be duplicated reaching the limit of two billion. Considering detailed description of the current global AT needs, there are 970 million individuals who need glasses and low vision aids, 75 million who need wheelchairs, 150 million who need mobility aids, 35 million who need prosthesis and orthosis, 94 million who need hearing aids, and 150 million who need cognitive aids. Rehabilitation Technology (RT) are technologies used to help people with physical disabilities increase their 16 2019 International Conference on Promising Electronic Technologies (ICPET) 978-1-7281-2337-0/19/$31.00 ©2019 IEEE DOI 10.1109/ICPET.2019.00011