A Fuzzy Logic Architecture for Rehabilitation Robotic Systems

Abstract

Robots are highly incorporated in rehabilitation in the last decade to compensate lost functions in disabled individuals. By controlling the rehabilitation robots from far, many benefits are achieved. These benefits include but not restricted to minimum hospital stays, decreasing cost, and increasing the level of care. The main goal of this work is to have an effective solution to take care of patients from far. Tackling the problem of the remote control of rehabilitation robots is undergoing and highly challenging. In this paper, a remote wrist rehabilitation system is presented. The developed system is a sophisticated robot ensuring the two wrist movements (Flexion /extension and abduction/adduction). Additionally, the proposed system provides a software interface enabling the physiotherapists to control the rehabilitation process remotely. The patient’s safety during the therapy is achieved through the integration of a fuzzy controller in the system control architecture. The fuzzy controller is employed to control the robot action according to the pain felt by the patient. By using fuzzy logic approach, the system can adapt effectively according to the patients’ conditions. The Queue Telemetry Transport Protocol (MQTT) is considered to overcome the latency during the human robot interaction. Based on a Kinect camera, the control technique is made gestural. The physiotherapist gestures are detected and transmitted to the software interface to be processed and be sent to the robot. The acquired measurements are recorded in a database that can be used later to monitor patient progress during the treatment protocol. The obtained experimental results show the effectiveness of the developed remote rehabilitation system.