A gravity balancing assistant arm design in 3-D for rehabilitation of stroke patients

Abstract

A gravity balancing assistant arm design in 3-D is a mechanical mechanism consisted of springs, rigid rods, joints and sliders, which can be modified to the geometry and inertia of the arm of stroke patients. This mechanism is designed without any controllers and motors, based solely on mechanical principles, to achieve a relative balance of gravitational potential energy and elastic potential energy, thereby reducing the burden on the arm of a stroke patient to facilitate rehabilitation. To achieve this function, first, the center of gravity of the patient’s arm will be positioned, and then the mounting position of the spring on the assistant arm will be determined. In this paper, the following objectives will be achieved: (i) the calculation of the gravitational potential energy and the elastic potential energy in the mechanism (ii) the simplification of the potential energy equation and the elimination of the coefficient of the items related to the angle. (iii) The comparison between 2-D and 3-D cases of the mechanism. (iv) The motion process of simulating the mechanism using MATLAB (v) Using MATLAB to create the energy plots (vi) Using SolidWorks to construct the prototype of the mechanism (vii) Describe the practical application and future extensions of this mechanism.