Compact design of a robotic device for shoulder rehabilitation

Abstract

This paper shows the design of a low-cost upper limb rehabilitation robot that can be applies to various symptoms of shoulder disorders. The 3-dimensional shoulder tracking mechanism was implemented to allow the translational movement of the shoulder joint. A gravity compensation mechanism was designed to compensate the weight of device and arm so that the patient would not feel the inconvenience caused by the weight. We designed an alignment mechanism for converting direction of rotation so that the patient could implement shoulder rehabilitation in various directions. By changing the relative direction of the actuator with respect to the user, 5 typical shoulder rehabilitation movement could be implemented which are flexion/extension, abduction/adduction, oblique raise, horizontal abd/adduction and internal/external rotation. At the same time, the device can allow the translational movement of shoulder joint during the rehabilitation exercise for the natural upper limb motion. This paper shows that even a low-end robot using an actuator can effectively applicate with various shoulder diseases.