Regaining the activities of daily living after stroke and spinal cord injury requires repetitive and intensive tasks, meaning that rehabilitation therapy should be treated with a long duration. Thus, the need for rehabilitation devices based home is of most importance to increase the rehabilitation process and provide more comfortability for patients. This paper focuses on implementing and construction of a three degree of freedom (DOF) (flexion/extension, adduction/abduction, and pronation/supination), low cost, lightweight, and portable robotic exoskeleton for wrist-forearm rehabilitation. SolidWorks software program and 3D printer technology are used to model and construct the proposed robotic exoskeleton structure. In addition, the anthropometric parameters of the normal human lower arm are considered for this exoskeleton to provide a range of motion (ROM) and velocity for the links, joints, which matches with the anatomical structure of human and also to avoid the excesses motions over the normal range. The exoskeleton is constructed by a 3D printer utilizing polylactic acid (PLA) plastic material. The proposed implementing structure of the robotic exoskeleton shows comfortable, lightweight, simple and economic as well.
To regain the activities of daily living (ADL) for patients suffering from different conditions such as stroke and spinal cord injury, they must be treated with a rehabilitation process through programmed exercises. The human motor system can learn through motor learning. This study focused on rehabilitating wrist and forearm joints to restore the ADL by designing and constructing a robotic exoskeleton. The exoskeleton was designed to rehabilitate the patients by providing a 3-degree-of-freedom (DOF), including flexion/ extension, adduction/abduction, and pronation/supination movements. It was specified to be portable, comfortable, lightweight, compatible with the human anatomical structure, and provided a speed and range of motion (ROM) as in normal subjects. It was designed with a SolidWorks and constructed with a 3D-printer technique using polylactic acid (PLA) plastic material. The overall exoskeleton was controlled with electromyography; angle information was extracted using EMG MyoWare and gyroscope sensors. It was applied for evaluation using 5 normal subjects and 12 subjects of stroke and spinal cord injury (SCI). As a result, the proposed exoskeleton had a strong impact on regaining muscle activity and increasing the ROMs of wrist and forearm joints. These results prove that the proposed exoskeleton can be used to perform physiotherapy exercises.
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