Development of a bilateral rehabilitation training system using the haptic device and inertia sensors

According to the neuro-rehabilitation theory, passive, resistance and bilateral training are commonly applied for recovering the motor-function of stroke patient. Among them, bilateral training is proved to be an effective method for the hemiparesis that occupies most part of stroke patients. In this article, a novel system is proposed for providing the bilateral training with coordinative motion of two limbs. This system is developed for the elbow function recovery and the motion of two limbs is detected with two inertia sensors. A commercial haptic device (Phantom Premium) is adopted for providing a feedback with information of errors and how to correct them. Combined with a graphic interface which provides a visual feedback, the patient can adjust the two limbs to a coordinative motion. This system can perform the training to those patients with some muscle strength. However, usually the rehabilitation training is hierarchical and those patients with little muscle strength can even not lift their own limbs. Therefore, a light-weight exoskeleton device is applied and this device could provide partial assisting force, thus the patient can gradually adapt to the training. In this article, an issue about the effectiveness of feedback is discussed and verified with several contrast experiments.