Abstract
Robot-assisted rehabilitation therapy has been proven to effectively improve upper limb motor function and daily behavior of patients with motor dysfunction, and the demand has increased at every stage of the rehabilitation recovery. According to the motor relearning program theory, upper limb motor dysfunction can be restored by a certain amount of repetitive training. Robotics devices can be an approach to accelerate the rehabilitation process by maximizing the patients’ training intensity. This paper develops a new end-effector upper limb rehabilitation robot (EULRR) first and then presents a controller that is suitable for the assist-as-needed (AAN) training of the patients when performing the rehabilitation training. The AAN controller is a strategy that helps the patient’s arm to stay close to the given trajectory while allowing for spatial freedom. This controller enables the patient’s arm to have spatial freedom by constructing a virtual channel around the predetermined training trajectory. Patients could move their arm freely in the allowed virtual channel during rehabilitation training while the robot provides assistance when deviating from the virtual channel. The AAN controller is preliminarily tested with a healthy male subject in different conditions based on the EULRR. The experimental results demonstrate that the proposed AAN controller could provide assistance when moving out of the virtual channel and provide no assistance when moving along the trajectory within the virtual channel. In the close future, the controller is planned to be used in elderly volunteers and help to increase the intensity of the rehabilitation therapy by assisting the arm movement and by provoking active participation.
Highlights
Epidemiological studies show that there are more than 10 million new trauma patients every year, among which most of these patients will be accompanied by upper limb motor dysfunction [1].According to the motor relearning program theory, a certain amount of exercise combined with an effective rehabilitation strategy could restore the upper limb dysfunction
The above studies are either exploratory studies on exoskeleton type rehabilitation robots or planar upper limb rehabilitation robots, while there are few related studies that are focused on the end-effector-based upper limb rehabilitation robot that can carry on the spatial movement. For those patients who have recovered partial upper limb motor ability, we develop a new end-effector upper limb rehabilitation robot (EULRR) that can carry on spatial movement first and present a controller that is suitable for the assist-as-needed (AAN) training of the patients when performing the rehabilitation training
The experimental testing is based on the EULRR, as described in the robot design in Section 2, which is an end-effector upper limb rehabilitation robot that can assist the patient’s arm in achieving spatial rehabilitation training
Summary
Epidemiological studies show that there are more than 10 million new trauma patients every year, among which most of these patients will be accompanied by upper limb motor dysfunction [1]. For those patients who have recovered partial upper limb motor ability, we develop a new end-effector upper limb rehabilitation robot (EULRR) that can carry on spatial movement first and present a controller that is suitable for the assist-as-needed (AAN) training of the patients when performing the rehabilitation training. Comparing with the existing impedance-based assistance strategy, such as [24,25,26], the assisted-as-needed controller presented in this paper enables the patient’s arm to have spatial freedom by constructing a virtual channel around the predetermined training trajectory Patients could move their arm freely in the allowed virtual channel during rehabilitation training, while the robot provides assistance when deviating from the virtual channel.
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