Quasi-3 DOF Active-Passive Hybrid Rehabilitation System for Upper Limbs "Hybrid-PLEMO"

Abstract

Several rehabilitation robots for upper limbs have been proposed so far, and clinical effectiveness was reported in several studies for the aged people or patients with stroke. However most of them have only 2-DOF for its active motion. It is important for designing a rehabilitation system which trains in the 3-DOF space because the upper limbs of humans works in 3-DOF space even expect for the wrist. We developed the quasi 3-DOF rehabilitation system which has 2-DOF force-feedback function in working plane but its working plane can be adjusted the inclination. And we named it Hybrid-PLEMO for it can be switched between active type and passive type. Hybrid-PLEMO is a compact, low-cost rehabilitation system for upper limbs with high safety by using ER brakes or ER actuators. Additionally, in Hybrid-PLEMO, we take direct-drive linkage mechanism by adding sub links and manipulability ellipsoid and polyhedron which means possible velocity of end effector are done for the evaluation of Hybrid-PLEMO arm mechanism. In this paper, we describe the mechanism of Hybrid-PLEMO.