From the past to the future of therapeutic orthoses for upper limbs rehabilitation

Abstract

The expansion of assistive technologies has been increasing significantly, involving almost all the daily activities, performed by disabled people. One of the highlights to be mentioned is the robotic orthoses, which are being used to amplify movements, to replace amputated limbs, and for a variety of rehabilitation therapies, among others. This study aims to present a review about upper limbs' orthoses, discussing their weaknesses, potentialities, and pointing out for future perspectives under the motor rehabilitation. Methods: For this research, it had been identified 161 papers, based on the bibliographic bases from IEEE and Science Direct, which were filtered by the keywords orthoses, hand, upper-limbs and technology. After the appropriate exclusions, 22 papers were analyzed. Results: This review indicates that most of the orthoses have been developed for rehabilitation therapies to be employed by people who have suffered stroke, cerebral palsy or spinal cord injury. This research summarized that the upper limbs movements are effectively produced by electric or pneumatic actuators, having a variety of degrees of freedom. Conclusion: This review has shown that, although there are many orthoses styles, ranging from electric to pneumatic actuators; also there are some technical restrictions that prevent their use by most people. However, upper limb orthoses seem to be a great solution for the rehabilitation of people who have suffered a stroke.

Evaluation of sEMG Signal Features and Segmentation Parameters for Limb Movement Prediction Using a Feedforward Neural Network

“…Wearable robots, such as active orthoses or exoskeletons, gain importance in rehabilitation as aids for people with disabilities, e.g., those induced by neuromuscular disorders, or in the support of people during physical labour [1][2][3][4]. Whereas passive orthoses, such as spring-loaded systems [5][6][7], provide immediate but uncontrolled support, current active (i.e., motorized) systems based on force or torque sensors [8] provide a controlled but unintuitive, delayed reaction of the technical system.…”

A Way of Bionic Control Based on EI, EMG, and FMG Signals

“…Creating highly functional prosthetic [ 3 , 4 , 5 , 6 , 7 ], orthotic [ 8 ], and rehabilitation [ 9 ] devices is a socially relevant scientific and engineering task since it allows bringing patients back to active life by partial restoration of the lost motor functions of an extremity and reducing rehabilitation time.…”

“…However, despite the last 50 years of technological progress, the development of bionic devices still faces certain hurdles. The main hurdle rendering the devices far from satisfactory for end-users is the lack of an intuitive and reliable control interface [ 9 , 10 , 11 ], allowing to overcome the problem of replacing an upper extremity [ 12 ]. The high functionality and accuracy of modern actuators [ 13 ] are limited by the capabilities of the existing bionic control methods.…”

A fairly simple mechatronic device for training human wrist motion

“…24,20 Similar devices and approaches are reported in the literature. 25,26 Silveira et al 27 presented a review of robots for rehabilitation of upper limbs. There are many orthoses, using actuators ranging from electric to pneumatic often with technical restrictions that prevent their practical use by most users.…”