Development of a force-assistant tele-rehabilitation system for the stroke

The goal of this study was to design a prototype of tele-rehabilitation system with force assistance that can be administered in both clinic and home therapy environments. A rehabilitation robotic device with its controller is designed to stretch and mobilize the impaired upper-limb safely and the interaction force and trajectory are sent to the server. The therapist in the hospital can control/monitoring the procedure and assess the effect of treatment remotely. Force-assistant tuning PID control scheme is introduced to adapt to different patient's status. VR-based training interface is developed to inspire the subject's motivation. Result shows that the robotic arm can track the predictive trajectory on the whole although there are interaction forces between the upper-limb and the rehabilitation system. Compared with the traditional hospital-based therapy, this system is more cost-efficient and more convenient for both the stroke patients and the clinicians. Further work in this area would involve experimentation with real patients to determine the efficacy of this system in a therapy.