Wrist rehabiitation training simulator for P.T. using pneumatic parallel manipulator

Abstract

We focus on the rehabilitation of human wrist joint whose motion is indispensable in our day-life. According to a Japan physical therapy white paper in 2014, there are currently about 93,000 of physiotherapist (hereinafter P.T.). The total number of P.T. has been increasing comparing before but skill improvement of P.T. is still important issue. Hearing from P.T., rookie P.T. are doing their wrist rehabilitation practice by taking another P.T.'s wrist each other. Robot technology has possibility to bring more efficient training environment. We develop a training simulator for P.T. in wrist rehabilitation using a pneumatic parallel manipulator from a view that it has 6 D.O.F. sufficient to correspond to complex wrist motion. Concretely, the manipulator behaves as a pseudo patient by realizing mechanical property of patient's wrist joint using an impedance control. After constructing a patient's wrist model on a manipulator, an expert P.T. and a rookie one give their training motion for the wrist model. Comparing the recorded training motion quantitatively using a visual interface, we give the environment to skill improvement and skill transfer between an expert and a rookie P.T. The validity of the proposed systems are confirmed through some experiments.