Robotics-assisted rehabilitation therapy for the hands and wrists using force sensorless bilateral control with shadow and mirror mode

Abstract

Recently, the robotic devices are used mainly as therapy aids in the rehabilitation process of a disabled persons. The robotic device are designed with applications of techniques to support the adaptive exercise possible. It can apply to repeat the process exercise as many times as you wish. Moreover, the data measurements of their improvement or decline can be analyzed through the sensors on the device. This paper proposes a specially designed force sensorless bilateral control based on Kalman-Filter Based State Observer (KFSO) for the hand and the wrist of the patient. By using KFSO, it can be applied to estimate a high bandwidth force sensation and good perception of an unknown environmental stiffness. Moreover, bilateral control based on the shadow mode and mirror mode is also proposed in order to improve human hand movement. To successfully implement neuro-recovery process, the mirror mode is proposed to help the brain into thinking the weaker hand or wrist is moving according to the stronger hand or wrist. With such a robust bilateral control scheme, significant high bandwidth haptic sensing in a rehabilitation robot can be achieved. The simulation results of the rehabilitation robot are provided to illustrate the performance of the proposed algorithms.