Design And Research Of Upper Limb Rehabilitation Robot Exoskeleton

Because of the rapid life and work pace, arms have become the busiest, and also the most vulnerable limbs. The traditional physical therapy about the limbs needs highly skillful techniques and is also strenuous and physically demanding. The rehabilitation robot, which combines the intelligent control with human motion, is able to bear highly intense tasks. With the help of rehabilitation robot, the limbs can be trained repeatedly in standardized actions, which are helpful to the nerve system’s rehabilitation. Finally, the motion and the control ability of the limb will be recovered. Based on this background, an upper limb rehabilitation robot was developed to help human’s arm rehabilitation training based on the principle of the rehabilitation.This paper analyzed the domestic and international development status about the upper limb rehabilitation robot, and discussed the methods used in upper limb rehabilitation training on each stage of rehabilitation according to related medical theory, and summarized the design principles of the upper limb rehabilitation robot eventually. Based on the principle of minimizing driving torque moment, a new type of arm rehabilitation robot was designed. The robot has4degrees of freedom, which included vertical and horizontal flexion/extension, the supination/pronation motion of the shoulder and the flexion/extension motion of the elbow.In this paper, the forward kinematics and inverse kinematics of the rehabilitation robot were analyzed according to D-H method, and the kinematics equation and motion space were obtained correspondingly, and then the validity of forward kinematics was proved by Matlab simulation analysis. Additionally, the dynamic of rehabilitation robot was analyzed by ADAMS, and got the relationship between the maximum acceleration and the length of structure. Then the structural optimization was completed accordingly to reduce the inertia impact to the limb while the robot was on work. Finally, the relationship between the driving torque and angle variation of each joint was studied, and provided a theoretical basis for the selection of the drive motors.A control system was proposed to the rehabilitation robot which adhered to the continuous passive mode (CPM). In this control system, dual-DSP and host computer worked together. Patient could modify the robot’s motion speed and duration as well as the range of motion. In the end, the bipolar H Bridge driving circuit was designed. A prototype of the exoskeleton robot for upper limb rehabilitation was developed, and the installation and debugging of the system was followed. Then the joint’s velocity experiment and joint’s motion angle tracking experiment were conducted. The experiment results showed that the rehabilitation robot can support and draw each part of the arm effectively. The traction can also be applied to each joint of the upper limbs accurately.