Performance of cable suspended robots for upper limb rehabilitation

Abstract

This work presents a general simulation tool to evaluate the performance of a set of cable suspended rehabilitation robots. Such a simulator is based on the mechanical model of the upper limb of a patient. The tool was employed to assess the performances of two cable-driven robots, the NeReBot and the MariBot, developed at the Robotics & Mechatronics Laboratories of the Department of Innovation in Mechanics and Management (DIMEG) of University of Padua, Italy. This comparison demonstrates that the second machine, which was conceived as an evolution of the first one, yields much better results in terms of patient's arm trajectories.