Development of Wrist Rehabilitation Equipment Using Pneumatic Parallel Manipulator

—Realization of Multiple D.O.F. Rehabilitaiton Motion—

Abstract

In this study, we focused on a rehabilitation motion of human wrist joint and aim at developing a mechanical equipment to support these rehabilitation motion. A pneumatic parallel manipulator is introduced since it can drive multiple D.O.F. enough to correspond to a wrist motion and has inherent compliance characteristics resulted from air compressibility works as safety mechanism and minute force regulating function. An impedance control strategy is applied on the manipulator to implement rehabilitation motion by adjusting impedance parameters appropriately. The validities of the proposed multiple D.O.F. rehabilitation system for the several rehabilitation motion are confirmed through experiments.