Patient-tailored adaptive robotic system for upper-limb rehabilitation

Abstract

This paper presents a robotic system for 3D upperlimb robot-aided rehabilitation, grounded on a patient-tailored approach: it real-time adapts therapy characteristics to patient needs, by including the patient in the control loop. The system is composed of a 7-DoF robot arm, an adaptive interaction control system and a module for the evaluation of patient performance; it records patient biomechanical data through an unobtrusive sensory system, evaluates patient biomechanical state and updates robot control parameters for modifying the level of assistance and task complexity in the 3D space. The adaptive interaction control and the module for assessing patient biomechanical state are described in detail in the paper. The experimental validation is carried out on healthy subjects and results in 2D and 3D space are provided.