Mechatronic Design of a Robot for Upper Limb Rehabilitation at Home

Abstract

Abstract This paper addresses the design of a novel bionic robotic device for upper limb rehabilitation tasks at home. The main goal of the design process has been to obtain a rehabilitation device, which can be easily portable and can be managed remotely by a professional therapist. This allows to treat people also in regions that are not easily reachable with a significant cost reduction. Other potential benefits can be envisaged, for instance, in the possibility to keep social distancing while allowing rehabilitation treatments even during a pandemic spread. Specific attention has been devoted to design the main mechatronic components by developing specific kinematics and dynamics models. The design process includes the implementation of a specific control hardware and software. Preliminary experimental tests are reported to show the effectiveness and feasibility of the proposed design solution.