Human Upper-Extremity Rehabilitation Trainer (Hurt)

Abstract

With the evolving trends and growing population there arise the need of assistive supporting and rehabilitation devices which are either used for improvising the strengths of the human or to offer an assistance to regain the lost motion of a particular limb joint. Particularly the musculoskeletal diseases are getting increased in the younger age due to work environment and aging and as a consequence the need of assistive devices is on the rises. The current demand is for designs that are adaptable and affordable, and for these designs, design perspectives must be considered in order to create fewer complex designs and ease production restrictions. The paper proposes a novel idea to offer rehabilitation to the lost motion on the human upper limb and develops a cost-effective upper extremity exo-skeleton to address the post stroke patients. Design analysis is carried out to obtain the important joint motions for offering rehabilitation to the user with easily available components in an affordable way. The Degrees of Freedom with respect to the human upper limb joint is kept in mind in designing the model to offer effective rehabilitation at minimal cost. The developed model is a self-sustaining, battery-operated and detachable design which can be placed in compact places.