Wearable Robot for Simulating Knee Disorders in the Training of Manual Examination Techniques

This study addresses a haptic simulator of diseased knee joints that is intended for the use in the training of manual examination techniques used in physical therapy. These techniques involve clinicians moving the impaired joint of a patient to test the dynamic joint resistance caused by a condition. Our exoskeleton robot simulates five types of common knee problems. The simulated symptoms were checked in terms of subjective similarity to actual symptoms that physical therapists experience in their work. Three of the five symptoms could be correctly identified, whereas the other two were found to require further tuning. The proposed patient simulator could improve the training of manual examination techniques by being able to simulate a variety of symptoms.