Pehlivan Ali Utku, Celik Ozkan, O'Malley Marcia K
Mechatronics and Haptic Interfaces Laboratory, Department of Mechanical Engineering and Materials Science, Rice University, Houston, TX 77005, USA.
IEEE Int Conf Rehabil Robot. 2011;2011:5975428. doi: 10.1109/ICORR.2011.5975428.
Robotic rehabilitation has gained significant traction in recent years, due to the clinical demonstration of its efficacy in restoring function for upper extremity movements and locomotor skills, demonstrated primarily in stroke populations. In this paper, we present the design of MAHI Exo II, a robotic exoskeleton for the rehabilitation of upper extremity after stroke, spinal cord injury, or other brain injuries. The five degree-of-freedom robot enables elbow flexion-extension, forearm pronation-supination, wrist flexion-extension, and radial-ulnar deviation. The device offers several significant design improvements compared to its predecessor, MAHI Exo I. Specifically, issues with backlash and singularities in the wrist mechanism have been resolved, torque output has been increased in the forearm and elbow joints, a passive degree of freedom has been added to allow shoulder abduction thereby improving alignment especially for users who are wheelchair-bound, and the hardware now enables simplified and fast swapping of treatment side. These modifications are discussed in the paper, and results for the range of motion and maximum torque output capabilities of the new design and its predecessor are presented. The efficacy of the MAHI Exo II will soon be validated in a series of clinical evaluations with both stroke and spinal cord injury patients.
近年来，机器人康复技术已获得显著发展，这主要得益于其在恢复上肢运动和运动技能功能方面的临床疗效证明，主要体现在中风患者群体中。在本文中，我们介绍了MAHI Exo II的设计，这是一种用于中风、脊髓损伤或其他脑损伤后上肢康复的机器人外骨骼。这个五自由度机器人能够实现肘部屈伸、前臂旋前-旋后、腕部屈伸以及桡尺偏斜。与它的前身MAHI Exo I相比，该设备在设计上有多项显著改进。具体而言，腕部机构中的间隙和奇异点问题已得到解决，前臂和肘关节的扭矩输出有所增加，增加了一个被动自由度以实现肩部外展，从而改善了对线，特别是对于轮椅使用者，并且现在的硬件能够实现治疗侧的简化和快速切换。本文讨论了这些改进，并给出了新设计及其前身的运动范围和最大扭矩输出能力的结果。MAHI Exo II的疗效将很快在一系列针对中风和脊髓损伤患者的临床评估中得到验证。
