Mechanism Design and Software of Quasi-3-DOF Active-Passive Rehabilitation System for Upper Limbs, "Hybrid-PLEMO"

Until now, some rehabilitation systems for upper limbs were developed and clinical effectiveness was reported in several studies for the aged people or stroke patients. 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. However, there was few rehabilitation system for 3-D training with high safety. We developed the quasi-3-DOF rehabilitation system Hybrid-PLEMO, which has 2-DOF force-feedback function in working plane but its working plane can be adjusted the inclination. Hybrid-PLEMO is a compact, low-cost rehabilitation system for upper limbs with high safety by using ER brakes or ER actuators and can be switched between active type and passive type. Additionally, in Hybrid-PLEMO, we take direct-drive linkage mechanism by adding sub links. In this paper, we describe the mechanism of Hybrid-PLEMO.