Workspace analysis of upper limb for a planar cable-driven parallel robots toward upper limb rehabilitation

Abstract

Nowadays robotic technology is widely used in rehabilitation especially in stroke rehabilitation. Comparing conventional robots, cable-driven parallel robots have many advantages such as low moving inertia, high power efficiency, large workspace, low cost, and so forth. On this account, three-degree-of-freedom (3-DOF) cable-driven parallel for upper limb rehabilitation is currently under development. This paper presents motion analysis of upper limb to design a 3-DOF upper limb rehabilitation robot. Main feature of this rehabilitation robot is to provide the relatively large workspace and to be less dangerous in the situation of robot's malfunction due to reduced moving part. Since our rehabilitation is being designed to have a planar workspace, the motion of upper limb is also analyzed in a plane.