Rehabilitation Support Robot for Self-Standing-Up Training of Hemiplegic Stroke Patients - Design of Counterbalance Mechanism

The objective of the study involved developing a rehabilitation support robot for self-standing-up training of hemiplegic stroke patients to restore normal standing-up motion. Based on our previous analysis of the therapist's guiding movements in standing-up training of patients, a passive-type robot was adopted. However, the link weight of the robot acts as a load at the patient's waist. In this work, we designed a counterbalance mechanism for the robot in order to reduce the load at the patient's waist and determined the optimal parameters for the mechanism. We confirmed by simulation that the specifications of the forces acting on the end-effectors of the robots were satisfied, and thus the proposed counterbalance mechanism was effective.