Upper Limb Rehabilitation Robot

In recent years, with the development of medical technology, the mortality rate of stroke patients has dropped significantly, and most stroke survivors will develop motor dysfunction. 55% to 75% of stroke patients will have persistent upper limb and hand motor dysfunction, resulting in a decrease in the quality of daily life. Rehabilitation of upper and lower limb function after stroke is a complex process that usually requires multidisciplinary and multifield collaboration.

 

Evidence-based medicine points out that highly repetitive exercise training can effectively improve the upper limb movement ability of stroke patients. Early passive or active high-repetition upper limb movements can effectively increase sensorimotor input, prompt the brain to generate movement plans, and at the same time bring the muscles to an appropriate muscle tone state, thereby effectively promoting the recovery of upper limb motor functions in stroke patients.

 

At present, in addition to relying on some traditional sports recovery training performed by therapists, robot-assisted training has been gradually applied to clinical rehabilitation. In the past 10 years, some foreign literature has reported that the application of robot-assisted systems can effectively promote the recovery of upper limb motor functions. With the development of science and technology, the technology of upper limb robots has also improved rapidly, which can provide patients with a better three-dimensional weight loss system, so that Patients can undergo highly repetitive motor function training at an early stage.

 

The upper limb rehabilitation robot is based on the principle of neuroplasticity, using limb movements combined with various changes in the game environment to allow the nervous system to undergo structural and functional changes and maintain such changes through repeated, task-oriented training.

 

Compared with manual manual rehabilitation treatment, it has three major advantages. First, robots are more suitable for performing long-term simple and repetitive movement tasks, which can ensure the intensity, effect and accuracy of rehabilitation training, and have good movement consistency, while also reducing the labor intensity of nursing staff. Second, the rehabilitation robot has programmable capabilities, which can provide personalized training of different intensities and modes according to the patient's degree of injury and recovery, and enhance the patient's awareness of active participation, which is of great significance to improving rehabilitation efficiency. Third, rehabilitation robots usually integrate a variety of sensors and have powerful information processing capabilities. They can effectively monitor and record human movement data during the entire rehabilitation training process, provide real-time feedback on the patient's rehabilitation progress, and monitor the patient's rehabilitation progress. Make quantitative evaluations to provide doctors with a basis for improving rehabilitation treatment plans.

 

There are many ways to classify rehabilitation robots based on different criteria. According to the training mode, it can be divided into passive training, active and passive training, and resistance training. Passive training means that in the early stages of rehabilitation, when the patient's upper limbs are completely unable to move autonomously, the robot provides complete assistance, driving the patient's upper limbs to help the patient complete training actions. Active and passive training means that when the patient has a certain degree of autonomous movement ability, but the strength is not enough to complete the training task, the robot provides auxiliary force to help the patient complete the training task. Resistance training means that in the later stages of rehabilitation, after the patient has gained comprehensive motor abilities, the robot provides resistance to achieve limb confrontation training to enhance muscle strength and movement coordination.

 

Upper Limb Dynamic Arm Support 

Rehabilitation robot is one of the intelligent equipment for auxiliary function rehabilitation. Rehabilitation robots used in clinical applications can often be divided into upper limb external devices and lower limb external devices according to the application site. The classification of upper limb rehabilitation robots varies with the basis of division. Upper limb rehabilitation robots can be divided into single degrees of freedom, two degrees of freedom, three degrees of freedom and multiple degrees of freedom according to their degrees of freedom. According to the system structure, it can be divided into local, remote and virtual environment-based upper limb rehabilitation robots.

 

According to the different structural designs of upper limb rehabilitation robots, they can be divided into terminal-type and exoskeleton-type upper limb rehabilitation robots. The end-type upper limb rehabilitation robot is easier to adapt to individual differences. Since it only contacts the limbs at the end points, it is relatively easy to put on and take off. Most of the exoskeleton-type upper limb rehabilitation robots are floor-standing designs. This type of exoskeleton-type floor-standing upper limb rehabilitation robots often have key and difficult problems in the design of joint degrees of freedom. In addition, there are still new challenges in the continuous optimization of robot driving methods and control algorithms.