Development of 3-D Rehabilitation System for Upper Limb : 3rd Report : Applying VR Technology and Discussion through its Clinical Pretest

Rehabilitation treatments are important not only for persons who have something wrong in their upper limb function because of disease or disorder. Also they have benefits for the aged to exercise to keep their upper limb function. Since movements of the upper limbs are complicated, various and indispensable for daily activities. Application of robotics and virtual reality technology makes possible for new training methods and exercises on upper limb rehabilitation and for quantitative evaluations to enhance the qualitative effect of training. The authors have involved in a project managed by NEDO (New Energy and Industrial Technology Development Organization as a semi-governmental organization under the Ministry of Economy, Trade and Industry, Japan), “Rehabilitation System for the Upper Limbs and Lower Limbs,” and developed a 3-D and 3-DOF exercise machine for upper limb (EMUL) in which safety kept by actuators using ER fluid. In this paper, the authors focus on an aspect of EMUL; it is a force display device. The authors report virtual reality software of EMUL for rehabilitation training. They also describe some pretest using those software performed by able bodied persons, for clinical treatments in future work.