Development of the innovative design of an automatic equipment to aid in physical rehabilitation

Abstract

This paper addresses the development of an innovative design of an automatic equipment to aid in physical rehabilitation. Physical rehabilitation aims to help people with disabilities or about to get disabilities to interact with their social environment. During rehabilitation, the physiotherapist judges the training in the patient’s experience. For rehabilitation to be beneficial, the interaction between physiotherapist and patient is important. Several robotic devices have been developed by companies or institutions but with a high cost. The aim of this work is to present a robotic equipment for the physical rehabilitation of lower and upper limbs in patients who suffered muscle injury, stroke or surgery. A man-machine interface was developed to control the robot and manage the physical rehabilitation activity. Therefore, the physiotherapist begins to operate the system by entering the patient information and the type of exercise. The patient’s reactions will be computed during the exercises and detected by position and force sensors. Thus, from this innovation, patients can perform repetitive movements, exercising the affected limb, during the rehabilitation period, always following the recommendations of the physiotherapy professional. The project team is multidisciplinary and composed of engineers, mathematician, programmer and physiotherapists. So, security must be ensured by software and hardware in the system. Therefore, the manipulator robot can perform all active and passive exercises, as well as learn specific movements of exercises and execute them with or without the physical therapist through the human-machine interface.