ExoReha Exoskeleton Digital Twin in Metaverse for Telerehabilitation

Abstract

The development of robot-aided physiotherapy brings the need for remote control technologies, including digital twins. The paper presents the implementation of a digital twin architecture in ROS and ROS2 for an upper extremity exoskeleton dedicated to integrating its operation with the Metaverse. The presented digital model is built for the ExoReha exoskeleton with five degrees of freedom, two of which are not actuated. The two architectures of the digital twins presented in the paper are hosted by the device's control hardware (including the microcomputer controlling motion and communicating with the controllers and the microprocessor board for peripheral processes, including safety monitoring) and the operator's computer with VR headset connected. The final architecture consists of six nodes enabling the acquisition of the measured values from the physical device, filtering the data, presenting the configuration, planning control, computing control signals and implementing control signals into motor controllers and the simulation environment. Such an architecture can be used for immersive telerehabilitation with the use of an ExoReha exoskeleton with low data transfer needed. Moreover, thanks to the universal concept, it is easily transferable to other physiotherapeutic robots.