Development of a Robotic Platform for Upper Limb Rehabilitation

The aim of this project is to develop a rehabilitation robot intended for use in a non-specialised or domestic setting. Robots have been shown to have a positive effect on limb rehabilitation and developing rehabilitation robots for use outside of specialist rehabilitation centres could be beneficial in terms of access to, intensity and cost of treatment. The device is intended for the rehabilitation of the shoulder/elbow region of the upper limbs. The design requirements for such a device mean that it must be low cost, portable, robust and have a detailed focus on safety. Other areas of interest pertaining to rehabilitation robotic devices intended for this purpose are also discussed. One of these areas of interest is robot based patient assessment methods. The current widely accepted assessment scales are manually applied, which is inefficient for rehabilitation on a non-specialised or domestic setting and also leads to issues relating to intrarater and inter-rater reliability. Another area of interest is high level control strategies that could be potentially suitable for this type of robot.