Rehabilitative motion planning for upper limb rehabilitation robot based on virtual reality

In this paper, an upper limb rehabilitation robot based on virtual reality is developed to improve therapeutic efficacy. With the help of the robot, the patients can reach virtual items appearing randomly with impaired limbs in a virtual environment. The kinematics of the robot is analyzed and the appearance rules are made to avoid mechanical interference between the arms. Both passive mode and active mode are introduced into the rehabilitation system to ensure this system can be used in all clinical stages. The simulation results show that the upper limb rehabilitation robot can generate appropriate trajectories to improve therapeutic efficacy according to the motion planning methods based on kinematics analysis.