An Intelligent Rehabilitation Robotic Systems for Upper Limb Injury

中风仍然是运动功能丧失的主要原因。根据心脏和中风基金会的数据，中风每年给加拿大经济造成27亿美元的损失。由于医疗资源有限，技术有可能在康复中发挥更大的作用。我们的团队与经验丰富的治疗师协商，开发了一种智能的、用户友好的手臂康复机器人系统。加拿大卫生部批准该系统作为新的II类医疗设备进行调查试验。汉密尔顿健康科学公司对20名中风患者进行了随机对照临床试验。我们的试验证明，只有机器人辅助治疗，而不需要额外的物理治疗干预，可以改善运动功能和手臂功能。文献主张，在以往研究的基础上，开发一种新的基于上肢(手臂和手)功能的康复机器人，以最大限度地恢复运动模式，是提高康复效果的一个潜在途径。所报告的大多数手持设备都是作为独立设备设计的，无法集成到我们的康复系统中形成上肢、手和手臂的机器人设备。此外，目前的手部设备通常太大太重，不能用作末端执行器，作用力范围太小，或者有许多执行器，无法通过无法与标准机器人控制器集成的控制系统来驱动所有手指的手指。因此，我们将设计一种手装置，与目前的手臂康复机器人(目标I)集成在一起，实现日常生活活动。目前的文献表明，机器人辅助治疗应侧重于运动学和运动学分析，以区分真正的上肢运动和功能恢复。此外，以前没有研究涉及在治疗期间对患者的手臂和手的恢复进行定量评估。研究目标II和III将根据收集的运动学和运动学数据开发智能监测和评估系统以及中风恢复评估系统，以评估患者的运动功能损害程度和手臂和手的进展。因此，这项研究是必要的、创新的，解决了最先进的问题，并使加拿大成为康复机器人领域的领先者。

Stroke remains a leading cause of motor function loss. According to the Heart and Stroke Foundation, stroke costs the Canadian economy $2.7 billion a year. Since health care resources are limited, technology has the potential to play a bigger role in rehabilitation. Our team, in consultation with experienced therapists, has developed an intelligent user-friendly arm rehabilitation robotics system. Health Canada approved the system as a new class II medical device for investigational trials. A randomized controlled clinical trial with 20 stroke patients was conducted at Hamilton Health Sciences. Our trial proved that robot-assisted treament only, without additional physical therapy interventions can improve both motor function and arm functionality. Literature advocates that a potential approach to increase the effectiveness beyond past studies, is to develop a new whole upper limb (arm and hand) functionality-based rehabilitation robot, which maximizes recovery of motor schema. The majority of hand devices reported were designed as stand-alone devices and could not be integrated into our rehabilitation system to form an upper limb, hand and arm robotic device. Also, current hand devices are often too large and heavy to be used as an end-effector, have too limited a range of force, or have many actuators to drive all the finger digits with a control system that cannot be integrated with a standard robot controller. Hence, we will design a hand device to be integrated with the current arm rehabilitation robot (objective i) to achieve activities of daily living. Current literature suggests that robot-assisted therapy should focus on the kinematical and kinetic analysis to differentiate between genuine upper limb motor and functional recovery. Moreover, no previous studies addressed the quantitative evaluation of both the patient's arm and hand recovery during treatment. The research objectives ii & iii will develop an Intelligent Monitoring and Evaluation system and a stroke recovery assessment system based on collected kinematic and kinetic data to evaluate the patient's level of motor function impairment and progress of the arm and hand. Hence, the research is essential, innovative, addresses the state of the art and makes Canada a leader in rehabilitation robotics.