Development of Wrist Rehabilitation Equipment using Pneumatic Parallel Manipulator-Acquiring Training Motion of P.T. and Multiple D.O.F. Measurement of Wrist Property-

Abstract

In this study, we focus on a rehabilitation motion of human wrist joint and aim at supporting these rehabilitation trainings 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 strategy where an equipent acquires the P.T.'s rehabilitation motion in order patient to receive rehabilitation motion through the equipment as if they are trained by P.T. Then we derive a method to estimate wrist impedance in multiple D.O.F. and display the wrist mechanical property in a real-time graphical manner. The effectiveness of the proposed rehabilitation strategy is veryfied through some experiments.