Design of upper-arm module for a cable driven upper limb exoskeleton

Abstract

Stroke rehabilitation is essential and very important to stroke survivors to provide them with opportunity to relearn skills that they have lost after stroke. Stroke patient would have to undergo regular sessions of rehabilitation by dedicated therapist to regain skills that are essential for them to carry out daily task and these rehabilitation sessions may last up to years for the patient to fully recover depending on the severity of the patient’s condition. These rehabilitation are costly and also requires patient to travel to dedicated rehabilitation centre. For years, many researches and studies are done to provide alternate solution for stroke rehabilitation process, as such many studies are done in the field of incorporating robots into rehabilitation process in order to reduce cost and reduce hassle of patient to travel to a rehabilitation centre. In this study, we look into providing inexpensive and wearable upper limb rehabilitation exoskeleton that is lightweight and portable that can be carried around. The wearable upper limb exoskeleton is driven by cable system which is worn over the upper body with actuator system carried in a form of bag-pack by the user. This report presents initial designs of the system, fabrication and assembly of the system as well as evaluation of effectiveness of system through experimental testing and simulations to show that the system can be easily wearable, light weighted and able to function effectively as intended. The studies of initial design of this system will serve as initiatives for further development and improvement of cable driven wearable upper limb exoskeleton system.