Robotic assisted trajectory tracking for human arm rehabilitation

The following paper presents an assistive rehabilitation scheme for patients with upper limb impairments such as strokes. Based on the tracking of predefined trajectories either in Cartesian or joint space, the system allows an adjustable degree of variation with respect to the ideal trajectory. The amount of variations allowed is adjusted through the coefficients of an admittance function. It performs the transformation between the opposition forces, from the patient to the robot, and makes it divert, within certain limits, from the original trajectory. Keywords—7DOF exoskeleton, admittance, assisted rehabilitation, upper limb rehabilitation.