Ortopedic disability is losing functioning of muscles, skeleton and joints when nerve system has been damaged after accidents, diseases etc. The damage in the nerve system of the patients will prevent them functioning of their muscle system and as a result patients may have problems in walking and coordinating motion of their arms. The patients take part in the intensive physical therapy programs to regain their motor functioning. The availability of such training programs, however, is limited because of the amount of costly therapist’s time they involve, and the ability of the therapist to provide controlled, quantifiable and repeatable assistance to complex movement. It has been shown in clinical studies that robot assisted rehabilitation systems that can quantitatively monitor and adapt to patient progress, and ensure consistency during rehabilitation is more effective compared to physical therapy.
The aim of this project is development of a robot assisted rehabilitation system (called RehabRoby), that provides assistance to the motions of stroke patients during upper-extremity rehabilitation therapies. Additionally, control architecture of the robot assisted rehabilitation system is developed.
