ASSISTED UPPER LIMB MOVEMENT FOR ASSESSMENT AND THERAPY

本研究的第一阶段工作是开发一种用于中风康复的机器人双手治疗机，它将增强物理治疗师提供的临床康复，提供更好的定量数据来支持康复决策和进展审查，并最终显著提高中风引起的损伤的恢复速度和质量。目前中风康复的实践几乎完全依赖于物理治疗师的主观测量和日常生活活动能力恢复的程度。预计计算机控制的机器人双手治疗机的可用性将为更全面地揭示中风的本质和探索新的治疗方法提供革命性的机会。第一阶段研究工作的预期结果将是预商业模型的虚拟原型。该虚拟样机将使用六自由度测角仪进行评估，最终模型将构成第二阶段原型构建的基础。将开发一个单自由度双手动试验台，并用于评估将在原型中实现的力控制算法。拟议的商业应用：该项目的商业应用是制造和销售一种机器人治疗机器，提供中风损伤的临床康复，通过计算机评估和远程或网络治疗的自动化程序来增强。这种方法将导致一种更具成本效益的治疗方法，可用于其他形式的康复治疗。

The Phase I effort of this research is to develop a robotic bi-manual therapy machine for use in stroke rehabilitation that will augment the clinical rehabilitation provided by a physical therapist, provide better quantititative data to support rehabilitation decisions and progress review, and to ultimately result in substantial improvements in the speed and quality of recovery from impairments caused by stroke. Current practice in stroke rehabilitation relies almost exclusively on subjective measurements by the physical therapist and the extent to which the ability to perform activities of daily living is recovered. It is expected that the availability of a computer-controlled robotic bi-manual therapy machine will provide revolutionary opportunities for uncovering more fully the nature of stroke and the exploration of new therapies. The desired outcome of the Phase I research effort will be a virtual prototype of a pre- commercial model. This virtual prototype will be evaluated using a six degree of freedom goniometer, and the final model will form the basis of the prototype construction in Phase II. A single degree of freedom bi- manual test bed will be developed and used to evaluate force control algorithms to be implemented in the prototype. PROPOSED COMMERCIAL APPLICATIONS: The commercial applications of this project are the manufacture and distribution of a robotic therapy machine providing clinical rehabilitation of stroke impairment, which is enhanced by computerized assessment and automated routines for remote or networked therapy. This methodology would lead to a more cost effective therapy that could be developed for other forms of rehabilitation therapy.