The evaluation of rehabilitation training assisted by 6-DOFmanipulator

Abstract

We think about kinesitherapy movement as rehabilitation which a physical therapist takes, and have developed the programs for a robot manipulator which lets handicapped persons to do such exercise assisting a physical therapist. And, we evaluated the programs. In this study, we propose a method using a manipulator, and we confirm the practicability for the arm-kinesitherapy movements. In the experiment, we used a 6-DOF PUMA manipulator which assists of a physical therapist. As a role of a patient, we used a 2-DOF manipulator for measuring the distribution of load from the 6-DOF PUMA manipulator. We can measure angles of the joints, the torque which the patient manipulator gives the physical therapist manipulator from torque sensors and the stress on the forearm part of a patient manipulator from distortion gauge. We compared the real torque of a patient manipulator with the calculated torque of it from the sensors on the physical therapist manipulator such as rotation velocity and torque at each joint.