Design Issues for an Inherently Safe Robotic Rehabilitation Device

This paper outlines the main design issues for an upper limb rehabilitation device. In particular, human motions have been measured and analyzed in order to identify a safe workspace required for a rehabilitation device. A preliminary design solution is proposed based on a cable-driven parallel architecture, which can provide the required operation workspace and significantly improve the safety of the rehabilitation procedure as compared with exoskeletons or traditional robotic devices.