Abstract
Therapeutic exercises play an important role in physical therapy and rehabilitation. The use of robots has been increasing day by day in the practice of therapeutic exercises. This study aims to design and control a novel robotic platform named DIAGNOBOT for diagnosis and treatment (therapeutic exercise). It has three 1-degree-of-freedom robotic manipulators and a single grasping force measurement unit. It is able to perform flexion–extension and ulnar–radial deviation movements for the wrist and pronation–supination movement for the forearm. The platform has a modular and compact structure and is capable of treating two patients concurrently. In order to control the DIAGNOBOT, an impedance control–based controller was developed for force control, which was required for the exercises, as well as a proportional–integral–derivative controller for position control. To model the resistive exercise, an angle-dependent impedance control method different from traditional methods has been proposed. Experiments were made on five healthy subjects and it has been demonstrated that the proposed robotic platform and its controller can perform therapeutic exercises.
Highlights
Rehabilitation is a treatment process aimed at helping people with physical or anatomical disabilities
The passive, isotonic, and varioresistive exercises were performed by five healthy subjects
The input data according to the type of exercise were entered by the doctor via graphical user interface (GUI)
Summary
Rehabilitation is a treatment process aimed at helping people with physical or anatomical disabilities. These disabilities might be congenital or may have occurred due to an accident, injury, or illness, and this treatment process aims to help such people achieve the highest possible level of functionality in the medical, vocational, and social spheres. Rehabilitation allows disabled people to participate in life at the highest possible level.[1] Due to the increasing world population, the need for rehabilitation is increasing. A wide range of medical methods and treatments have been developed to refunctionalize these limbs, improve their range of motion (ROM) and muscle strength. Therapeutic exercises, one of these methods, play a crucial role in the process of restoring refunctionality for disabled limbs.
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