Upper Limb Motions Analysis for Development of an Upper Limb Rehabilitation Robotic System

The therapists from Prokinetic Rehabilitation Clinic identified the need of a passive rehabilitation robotic system with 3 degrees of freedom for the upper limb. This paper presents the work for the design and development of this kind of rehabilitation robotic system. This project aims to use a user-centered design process to create an upper limb rehabilitation robotic system for patients and therapists from Prokinetic Rehabilitation Clinic. The end-users are and will be involved actively, continuously throughout the system design, development and testing. Upper limb motion analysis has been done using the Vicon system, for simple motions and for functional motions. The positions, velocities and accelerations of each interest joint were obtained. We used this analysis in order to implement the control algorithms for the rehabilitation procedures with an upper limb rehabilitation robotic system. We designed the mechanical, actuation and control systems for this upper limb rehabilitation robotic system.