Development of a patient simulator for physical therapy exercise of the upper limb

Physical therapists play an important role to help people to regain social life after a disease or physical handicap. However, they can obtain their skills only from their practical experiences. The physical therapist trainee can enrich is experience only from the clinical practical training and this opportunity is limited. Therefore, we have been developing the upper limb patient simulator, which reproduce the stiffness of the elbow joint to allow trainees to increase the opportunities to obtain the practical exercise of the physical therapy. The system reproduces the diseases by generating stiffness of the elbow joint when the trainee tries to flex the simulated patient's arm elbow joint. We developed a mechanical part and a control system to realize the patient conditions and the full system has been evaluated by veteran physical therapists.