Evaluation and Verification of A Novel Wrist Rehabilitation Robot employing Safety-related Mechanism.

In this paper, we propose a wrist rehabilitation robot employing a novel actuation mechanism composed of electromagnetic clutch, brake, and motor and a safe-related mechanism. The actuation mechanism of the robot can perform both passive and active rehabilitation by the same mechanism. A torque sensor is also coupled to the actuation mechanism so as to measure the wrist joint moment in real-time. User can align his/her wrist joint to the center of rotation with the indication device. Moreover EMG is measured in real-time to evaluate effectiveness of active rehabilitation and to detect an emergency situation such as muscle spasm while doing active rehabilitation. In experiments, the effectiveness of active rehabilitation is evaluated and verified by 3D motion capture data and EMG data measured in real-time. The feasibility of the indication device is evaluated in the wrist joint alignment by verifying X-ray image of wrist and robot. Finally, we performed a usability test with five experts working in medical field, and the test result showed that the proposed robot can be applied to wrist rehabilitation.

Biomechanical assessment of electric lifting chair for persons with disability.

Electric lifting chair is a typical assistive product to aid for standing up and sitting down for persons with disability, and it is particularly useful for the elderly persons whose muscular system is weakened by degenerative joint disease. This paper describes a biomechanical assessment of electric lifting chair with hip-up function. In experiments we measured 3D motion data and electromyogram (EMG) on the femoral muscle when subject performs the standing motion on the predetermined seat height. The experimental results show that 15 degree of the hip-up angle is adequate for the hip-up function, and that the higher seat position is more effective to assist for standing up motion.