Development of Wearable Wrist Rehabilitation Device Using Flexible Pneumatic Cylinders

Abstract

Abstract.Recently, the rehabilitation device using a soft pneumatic actuator for disabled are actively researched and developed because of the insufficient number of PT. In the previous study, the wrist rehabilitation device using flexible robot arm that consisted of three flexible pneumatic cylinders was proposed and tested. In this study, the wearable wrist rehabilitation device is proposed and tested. The attitude control based on the analytical model of the devise is also carried out. As a result, it is confirmed that the device can trace the desired position in the condition when a human wears the device.

Development of Simplified Wearable Wrist Rehabilitation Device Using Low-Friction Type Flexible Pneumatic Cylinders

“…First, the embedded controller gets the output voltages from the accelerometer through A/D converter. Each length of the flexible pneumatic cylinders is calculated based on the analytical model [10]. The embedded controller also calculates the deviation from the desired position for each cylinder.…”

“…The attitude control of the robot arm while a human hand was being put on the robot arm was carried out [7]- [9]. The wearable wrist rehabilitation device that can be worn on patient's arm was also developed [10]. The device can be driven successfully.…”

“…Fig. 1 shows the tested wearable type wrist rehabilitation device using flexible pneumatic cylinders [10]. The device consists of two round stages and three flexible pneumatic cylinders.…”

Improvement of Wearable Wrist Rehabilitation Device Using Flexible Pneumatic Cylinders

“…The slide stage can move smoothly on the curved cylinder tube. Figure 2 shows the construction of the tested wearable type wrist rehabilitation device using flexible pneumatic cylinders that we had developed [11]. The device consists of three flexible pneumatic cylinders and two round stages.…”

“…where, d i(j) and u i(j) mean the current deviation of cylinder displacement and the differential input duty ratio for PWM valves, respectively. As an input duty ratio, 22.5 % is added to compensate the dead zone of PWM valves [11]. i shows the cylinder number 1, 2, and 3.…”