Simultaneous sensing and actuating compliance-adaptive apparatus for upper limb rehabilitation

Full or partial loss of functionality of the upper limbs is usually associated with strokes, spinal cord injury and many other similar injuries. Traditional rehabilitation treatment however is extremely labor intensive and are usually only available at hospital. However a lot of studies have shown that through the use of repetitive robotic practice can help the patients to recover. In this paper, a 4-bar linkages mechanism is designed and constructed as the upper limb rehabilitation apparatus which provided a set of motions for upper limb rehabilitation and a sensor-less method of assessing the patient arm using motor. The concept of using the input electrical impedance for monitoring the output mechanical impedance is then experimentally tested and justified in experiments.