Design and implementation of rehabilitation robot for human arm movements

Abstract EN

Physical disabilities such as full or partial loss of function in the shoulder and elbow are a common impairment in the elderly and a secondary effect due to strokes, trauma, sports and injuries.

Rehabilitation programs are the main method to promote functional recovery in these subjects.

This work focuses on designing and implementing a 3 DoF's non-wearable, light weight rehabilitation robot for rehabilitee the human arm that can be used in hospitals or homes.

This robot structure eliminates arm singularity problem of the end effecter with respect to the robot base by adding an offset link.

The design includes an adjustable mechanism standing on a seat for robot base and links to be adaptable for all body sizes and to align for all human arm lengths.

Intelligent PD-like Fuzzy Logic position controllers (FLCs) are designed for joints of the 3 DoF's robot to follow the desired medical trajectories during limited time with minimum overshoot and minimum oscillations in position response.

These controllers are implemented using MATLAB Simulink.

The controllers control the rehabilitation robot using Data Acquisition Card, (Advantech PCI-1712) that generates and reads the required digital and analog signals for robot.

The experimental results are acceptable in terms of the practical application.