Design and Kinematic Analysis of a Cable-driven Exoskeleton for Cervical Rehabilitation

In this paper, we present the cable-driven exoskeleton for cervical rehabilitation, which can play a role in improving the efficiency of rehabilitation when the incidence of cervical disease is increasing and trending younger. To design the three-degree-of-freedom cervical rehabilitation parallel mechanism, we firstly analyzed the neck motion mechanism and rehabilitation needs, based on which the design indexes and the sketch of the cable-driven exoskeleton are proposed. Then the kinematic modeling and simulation analysis were conducted to verify the rationality of the design of the exoskeleton, and the data of cable change under different rehabilitation paths was obtained. Then the detailed design of the exoskeleton and the establishment of the 3D model were carried out. Finally, the development of the cable-driven exoskeleton prototype for cervical rehabilitation was completed, and the human experiment was conducted to evaluate the comfort, motion performance and actual working space of the exoskeleton.