Rehabilitation for hemiplegia using an upper limb training system based on a force direction

Hemiplegia patients have complete paralysis of half their body, and encounter many challenges in living an independent life. Rehabilitation of the lower body is more important than that of the upper body for independent living; thus, recovering upper body functions of their paralyzed side is not enough. Rehabilitation robots may be used to assist training without therapists. In this study, a small portable rehabilitation robot was developed for use at home, and a new training method was proposed. This robot consists on an omni wheel mechanism and a force sensor, and is capable of deciding the motion based on the force value. Voluntary movement of a hemiplegia patient is recovered by the rehabilitation robot and proposed training method. Thus, verification experiments were performed using participants with hemiplegia. The CCI (Co-Contraction Index) from after training were smaller than ones of before training, thus the movement skills of the participants improved with respect to controlling force direction and magnitude. Moreover, manual function test (MFT) scores increased as reflected by improvements in the motor function of the upper limb using the proposed training method.