Motor Inertia Compensation of the ARMin Rehabilitation Robot

Therapists have been conducting training sessions with patients in rehabilitation for decades, but robot develope rs have not set focus on usability and acceptance of rehabilitation devices by the therapy staff [1], [2]. One important factor for robot usability is robot transparency, i.e. the r obot does neither disturb the patient nor the therapist with undesired interaction forces. Additionally, high robot tr ansparency is the basis for adding accurate supportive and resistive forces that will help the patient to further progres s in rehabilitation. In this paper, we want to increase robot transparency and, thus, robot usability of the ARMin upper extremity rehabilitation robot [3] by improving the compensation of undesired inherent robot dynamics.