Mechanical Design of a Robotic Exoskeleton for Upper Limb Rehabilitation

Abstract

This work presents the conceptual design, construction and testing of an upper limb rehabilitation system consisting of an exoskeleton of 6 degrees of freedom and a Human Machine Interface (HMI) to configure and control the exoskeleton. We present the study of the kinematics of the mechanical device followed by a three-dimensional modeling. Before the design of the exoskeleton was finished, we proceeded to the construction of a prototype in order to validate the model, using the Fused Filament Fabrication (FFF) technology and a three RX-64 Dynamixel motors from Robotis. LabVIEW® software from National Instruments was chosed to develop the HMI to communicate the exoskeleton with a computer for control the device and obtain relevant data, as the position or movement velocity. The results show the feasibility of the assistance of the robotic device in a rehabilitation processes.