Development of Wrist Rehabilitation Device Using Extension Type Flexible Pneumatic Actuators with Simple 3D Coordinate Measuring System

Abstract

Rehabilitation devices have been developed to assist patients recover from physical disabilities by using specific devices to do an exercise, training and therapy. The purpose of this study is to develop a home-based rehabilitation device which is safe to use and without requirement of person-in-charge. In this study, a simple home-based wrist rehabilitation device which can give passive exercise on spherical orbit while patients hold its handles is proposed and tested. The device has two moving handling stage driven by 6 extension type flexible pneumatic actuators (“EFPA” for short) on two hemispherical acrylic domes. The device can give passive exercise for the upper limb by changing the relative position of the patient’s hands. In this paper, the construction and operating principle of the tested device are described. A low-cost 3-dimentional coordinate measuring system using two wire-type linear potentiometers to control the position of the holding stages is also described. In addition, the tracking position control of the holding handles on sphere is carried out. As a result, it can be found that the handling stage of the tested device can trace the desired orbit based on the coordinates measured from 3-dimentional coordinate measuring system. It can be confirmed that the tested wrist rehabilitation device has a possibility to apply passive movements to the wrist along desired orbit while patients hold its handles.