Zhang Hang, Balasubramanian Sivakumar, Wei Ruihua, Austin Hiroko, Buchanan Sharon, Herman Richard, He Jiping
School of Biological and Health Systems Engineering, Arizona State University, Tempe, AZ 85287, USA.
Annu Int Conf IEEE Eng Med Biol Soc. 2010;2010:3686-9. doi: 10.1109/IEMBS.2010.5627647.
Robot-assisted rehabilitation is an active area of research in the field of stroke rehabilitation. RUPERT is a wearable robotic exoskeleton powered by pneumatic muscle actuators. In this study, we described the structure of the controllers for the five degrees of freedom currently used by RUPERT. We applied the RUPERT on 6 stroke patients to provide robot-assisted rehabilitation therapy in a clinical study. Statistical χ(2) test on the proportion of successfully reaching targets showed that 3 out of the 6 patients demonstrated significant improvement in reaching targets successfully, and the remaining 3 did not show performance improvement or deterioration. We plan to implement the RUPERT in the patient's house for easier access and more frequent use. More significant performance results are expected.
机器人辅助康复是中风康复领域一个活跃的研究方向。RUPERT是一款由气动肌肉驱动器驱动的可穿戴机器人外骨骼。在本研究中，我们描述了RUPERT目前所使用的用于五个自由度的控制器的结构。我们在6名中风患者身上应用了RUPERT，以在一项临床研究中提供机器人辅助康复治疗。对成功达到目标的比例进行的统计学χ(2)检验表明，6名患者中有3名在成功达到目标方面有显著改善，其余3名患者未表现出性能改善或恶化。我们计划将RUPERT应用于患者家中，以便更方便地使用且使用频率更高。预计会有更显著的性能结果。
