A rehabilitation robot with force-position hybrid fuzzy controller: hybrid fuzzy control of rehabilitation robot

The goal of this study was to design a robot system for assisting in the rehabilitation of patients with neuromuscular disorders by performing various facilitation movements. The robot should be able to guide patient´s wrist to move along planned linear or circular trajectories. A hybrid position/force controller incorporating fuzzy logic was developed to constrain the movement in the desired direction and to maintain a constant force along the moving direction. The controller was stable in the application range of movements and forces. Offline analyses of data were used to quantitatively assess the progress of rehabilitation. The results show that the robot could guide the upper limbs of subjects in linear and circular movements under predefined external force levels and apply a desired force along the tangential direction of the movements.