A Biomechanical Model to Aid Robot-Assisted Therapy of Upper Limb Impairment

This paper describes the design, and application of a dynamic bio-mechanical model for assessing and monitoring trajectory, position, orientation, force and torque generated by movements of the whole upper limb during a robot-assisted therapy. The individualised segment inertial parameters are based on anthropometric measurements. The model performs inverse dynamic analysis of the recorded arm's movements to calculate reaction forces and moments acting about the 3-DOF shoulder and 2-DOF elbow joints. A real time fused biofeedback of a 6-DOF force sensor and 3D pose sensors support the model. The model input and output parameters are stored in the patients' database, which is a part of the rehabilitation information system. Our experimental results confirm the nature of the treatment exercise taught to the robotic systems