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。由于卫生保健资源有限，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类医疗器械用于研究性试验。汉密尔顿健康科学中心对20名中风患者进行了一项随机对照临床试验。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，在过去的研究基础上，一种潜在的提高有效性的方法是开发一种新的全上肢（手臂和手）功能康复机器人，最大限度地恢复运动图式。报告的大多数手部装置被设计为独立装置，不能集成到我们的康复系统中形成上肢，手和手臂机器人装置。此外，目前的手部设备通常太大太重，不能用作末端执行器，力的范围太有限，或者有许多执行器来驱动所有的手指数字，控制系统不能与标准机器人控制器集成。因此，我们将设计一个手部装置，与现有的手臂康复机器人（目标1）相结合，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动力学分析，以区分真正的上肢运动和功能恢复。此外，之前没有研究对治疗期间患者的手臂和手的恢复进行定量评估。研究目标ii和iii将基于收集的运动学和动力学数据开发智能监测和评估系统和卒中恢复评估系统，以评估患者的运动功能损伤水平和手臂和手的进展。因此，这项研究是必要的，创新的，解决了最先进的技术，使加拿大成为康复机器人技术的领导者。

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.