An end-effector arm rehabilitation robot with VE

A novel powered end-effector arm rehabilitation robot with a game based virtual environment is introduced. The built rehabilitation robot provides both gravitational support and assistive drive force in horizontal planar motion to the user's arm. The proposed configuration completely decouples the motor's torque and can senses force in two opposite directions within task space. The paper investigated three different control modes: passive, active non-assist and active assist modes. The proposed active assist controller demonstrated effective performance as it can significantly reduce the muscle activity and force during a task. The generated assistive torque appears to be user friendly as muscle activity remains low during the exercise. In passive mode, the robot is able to maneuver the user's arm to destination chosen by the user. Surface electromyography (sEMG), force, and hand's trajectory are real-time monitored. These signals are quite useful since they are used as feedbacks for the controller and analyzed to develop a better controller or exercises for patients.