Wrist Rehabilitation Using Pneumatic Parallel Manipulator

Abstract

In this study, we focus on a rehabilitation motion of human wrist joint and aim at supporting these rehabilitation training by introducing a mechanical system like a robot. A pneumatic parallel manipulator is introduced since it can drive enough D.O.F to correspond to a wrist motion and has inherent compliance characteristics resulted from air compressibility. We propose a new training method for a muscle strengthening training based on electromyography (EMG), where a pay-load is set between joint angle and the muscle we want to train directly. In addition, we propose a method to detect muscle fatigue based on a frequency analysis of EMG. The effectiveness of the proposed method is confirmed through some experiments.