engleski

Critical validation of design strategies for a compact upper limb mechatronics rehabilitation device

Traditional physical rehabilitation therapy, aimed at recovering upper limbs’ functionality of stroke patients, still mainly relies on the assistance of therapists. Mechatronics-based rehabilitation devices enable, in turn, a large number of automated high-intensity movements, thus assuring a more effective rehabilitation with fewer resources. Some commercial solutions of this type are available, but they are generally expensive, heavy and voluminous, while not allowing the power contribution to be adjusted to the autonomous effort provided by the patients, as well as having a very uneven number and distribution of the used degrees of freedom (DOFs). The aim of this work is to provide a critical assessment of the needed number of active and passive DOFs as well as of the viable control approaches to obtain the needed functionality of the device. The resulting solution should be as simple as possible, while allowing to achieve rehabilitation efficiency by improving patients’ upper limb coordination and ranges of motion of each joint.

Upper limb rehabilitation ; compact mechatronics device ; design analysis ; DOFs ; adaptive control

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