Development of upper limb rehabilitation robot prototype for home setting

Stroke is one of the leading causes of adult disability in the world. Most of the persons affected have an important form of paralysis and they need professional help for rehabilitation. To date, there are various robotic devices designed to deliver upper limb rehabilitation for people with such disability. However, most of the robots developed are intended for use in a specialist rehabilitation centre setting. Thus, the robotic devices developed were bulky and complicated. In this research, a new design concept of upper limb rehabilitation robot for home setting was proposed. The model is expected to perform two degrees of freedom that is rotation in horizontal and vertical planes. Prior to fabrication, a kinematic analysis of robotic arm was simulated in Working Model software to recognize the important parameters. The experiment was carried out to perform the exercises and results showed a very good agreement with the analyses. Copyright © 2014 BICET -All right reserved.