Design and concept of a haptic robotic telerehabilitation system for upper limb movement training after stroke

Abstract

Robotic therapy devices have been an important part of clinical neurological rehabilitation for several years. Until now such devices are only available for patients receiving therapy inside rehabilitation hospitals. Since patients should continue rehabilitation training after hospital discharge at home, intelligent robotic rehab devices could help to achieve this goal. This paper proposes a novel multimodal home therapy concept and robot based system for motor telerehabilitation which is currently being further developed. The system is based on two haptic rehabilitation devices i) the Bi-Manu-Track (BMT) 2×1 DOF robotic haptic rehabilitation device with assist-as-needed control algorithms and ii) an enhanced version of the 3 DOF passive Reha-Slide system. The paper describes the technical system setup as well as user centered design aspects.