A Cooperative Control Scheme for Robotic Rehabilitation of Arm Impairment after Stroke

Recovery of arm movement after stroke partly relates to quantity of functionally relevant practice. Physical therapies involve careful guidance of the paretic arm through therapeutic exercise to allow relearning of joint co-ordinations needed for functional arm movement. A robotic device that helps deliver more rehabilitation treatment would accelerate recovery of arm weakness. This paper describes the development of a cooperative controller for a robotic system (iPAM) that is being developed which will provide intelligent, interactive, safe movement treatment to help recovery of arm weakness after stroke.