Advanced Wheelchair Rehabilitation: Surface EMG-augmented 9-DoF System for Upper and Lower Limb

Abstract

The rehabilitation is a most important phase in recovery of motor movements in the body. Using advanced robotic systems in the field of rehabilitation brings effective therapy in recuperation treatment. In this paper we propose a novel Electromyography (EMG) signal augmented, upper and lower limb integrated, Internet of Things (IoT) enabled, wheel chair based exoskeleton system called XoRehab. The proposed system is designed for patients affected with hemiplegic, paraplegia and tetraplegia. Existing systems as per literature survey are, for either for upper or lower limbs, with limited degrees of freedom. A system with integrated upper and lower limb mechanisms can help in reducing the patients' movement for treatment from one system to another. The addition of EMG signals helps assess the recovery status. Additionally, providing remote access using IoT framework enables home-based rehabilitation. The system prototype has been successfully developed and experiments for various muscle movements have been conducted. The photograph of the developed system and the plots of the muscle movements captured by EMG signals, have been included as results.