A Real Framework to Apply Collaborative Robots in Upper Limb Rehabilitation

摘要

Rehabilitation is an important recovery process from dysfunctions that improves the patient’s activities of daily living. On the other hand, collaborative robotic applications, where humans and machines can share the same space, are increasing once it allows splitting a task between the accuracy of a robot and the ability and flexibility of a human. This paper describes an innovative approach that uses a collaborative robot to support the rehabilitation of the upper limb of patients, complemented by an intelligent system that learns and adapts its behaviour according to the patient’s performance during the therapy. This intelligent system implements the reinforcement learning algorithm, which makes the system robust and independent of the path of motion. The validation of the proposed approach uses a UR3 collaborative robot training in a real environment. The main control is the resistance force that the robot is able to do against the movement performed by the human arm.