Development of an upper limb rehabilitation robot system for bilateral training

The paper deals with tracking control in both sides of an upper limb rehabilitation robot system. A Rehabilitation Intelligent Training System (RITS) for the recovery of motion function of upper limbs is introduced. The system has a lot of advantages for its special applications such as small size, less weight and good human-computer interaction interface during the rehabilitation process. Besides, this system consists of the Upper Limb Exoskeleton Rehabilitation Device (ULERD), a haptic device called PHANTOM Premium 1.5, an MTx sensor, a computer and so on. The system is a master-slave rehabilitation system. The master side is ULERD and the slave said is the PHANTOM Premium. Tracking control in two sides means the slave side follows the motion of the master side through tracking control with force feedback. In the bilateral training process, the impaired hand of the patient wears the ULERD and the intact hand grips the stylus of the PHANTOM Premium. When the ULERD is moved by the patient, the stylus of PHANTOM Premium will track it within very short time. Experiment has been performed to prove that the bilateral training in two sides of the robot system has a good following performance. The development of this method can be a promising approach for further research in more effective rehabilitation to the upper limb.