Design and control of a robotic assistive device for hand rehabilitation (RAD-HR)

Abstract

To assist the elderly and/or physically disabled people who no longer possess proper function of their hand motion, we have been developing a robotic assistive device to rehabilitate the hand motions to improve quality of life. The proposed assistive device will be comprised of three degrees of freedom enabling basic movements and hand function. In this research we have focused on the modeling and control of the proposed assistive device. To achieve the dynamic simulation of the developed model, nonlinear computed torque control technique was employed. In the simulation, the trajectory tracking performance of the controller was evaluated.