Development of lower limb rehabilitation evaluation system based on virtual reality technology

Nowadays, with the development of the proportion of the elderly population in the world, several problems caused by the population aging gradually into people's horizons. One of the biggest problems plagued the vast majority of the elderly is hemiplegia, which leads to the vigorous development of the physical therapists. However, these traditional methods of physical therapy mainly rely on the skill of the physical therapists. In order to make up the defects of traditional methods, many research groups have developed different kinds of robots for lower limb rehabilitation training but most of them can only realize passive training which cannot adopt rehabilitation training based on the patients' individual condition effectively and they do not have a rehabilitation evaluation system to assess the real time training condition of the hemiplegic patients effectively. In order to solve the problems above, this paper proposed a lower limb rehabilitation evaluation system which is based on the virtual reality technology. This system has an easy observation of the human-computer interaction interface and the doctor is able to adjust the rehabilitation training direct at different patients in different rehabilitation stage based on this lower limb rehabilitation evaluation system. Compared with current techniques, this novel lower limb rehabilitation evaluation system is expected to have significant impacts in medical rehabilitation robot field

Development of a rehabilitation robot for hand and wrist rehabilitation training

Up to now, the number of hemiplegia rehabilitation devices is increasing quickly along with hemiplegic patients'. But most of hand rehabilitation training just limit to the fingers flexible training of patients' affected hand. They not only ignore the importance of functional training of hand, but also wrist cooperative training during rehabilitation process. In our new research, we proposed a novel hand and wrist rehabilitation robot to achieve grasp functional training of hand except thumb and intorsion/extorsion and dorsiflexion/plantar flexion of wrist, which provides a creative hand rehabilitation way for hemiplegic patients. In this paper, we will introduce the detail design of the robot. It mainly includes two rehabilitation units - wrist rehabilitation unit and hand rehabilitation unit, which can realize separate motion or cooperate motion of hand and wrist based on patients' willingness. What's more, the torque sensor unit is purposely designed to detect feedback torque of related motion instead of available ones in the market, which makes the whole mechanical structure more compact. In a word, this novel hand and wrist rehabilitation robot will have a promising prospect

Development an arm robot to simulate the lead-pipe rigidity for medical education

Neurologic examination takes an important role in the physical examination. It requires abundant knowledge with prominent skills. Normally, the medical staffs, especially novices are trained to master the skills and accumulate experiences with several methods such as watching video, training with the simulated patient (SP), and so on. However, the drawbacks of the above methods, such as lack of multi-symptoms, lack of active interactions, etc, limit the training effects. To make up them, several kinds of medical training simulators have been developed to improve training effectiveness. However, most of these simulators just focus on mimicking the symptoms. The could not simulate the pathology of diseases. In this paper, we will propose an elbow robot named WKE-2(Waseda Kyotokagaku Elbow Robot No.2) to simulate the symptoms of motor nerve system for neurologic examination training on elbow force examination. In this paper, the mechanism of the elbow robot and physiological neurological model is described. As a sample, the performance of lead-pipe symptoms is introduced. Taking advantage of the robot, the trainee can get a full training on the examination skills and knowledge as well as the understanding of disease effection. Finally, several experiments are performed to verify the proposed robot. The results lead to the consideration that the approach is worth following in further research.

Development of an arm robot with human-like motor nerve model for neurological examination training

Development of an arm robot with human-like motor nerve model for neurological examination trainin

Gait motion analysis based on WB-4 sensor with quaternion algorithm

Up to now, with the increasing of the elderly population, more and more patients are suffering from hemiplegia. The needs for hemiplegic rehabilitation is increasing quickly. As traditional rehabilitation, each patient must be treated by therapist, one by one. However, because of the different levels of therapists, the rehabilitation cannot be performed as the as the same. Normally, the rehabilitation status diagnosing is still be performed by therapists with the subjective experience. It caused the inhomogeneity on rehabilitation evaluation. It also sometimes causes negative influence on the rehabilitation effect. To solve these problems, many researches focusing on assessing the status of the hemiplegic patients quantitatively are proposed rehabilitation evaluation systems. Rehabilitation motion detection is the basis of the evaluation system, and it requires the participation of therapist. In this paper, a method is presented to detect lower limb motion of hemiplegic patients based on inertial sensor technology. The gesture quaternion of lower limb can be obtained through LPMS. With the matrix and Euler angle changing algorithm, combining with the simplified lower limb motion model, the rotation angle of joint can be computed. Finally, the curve of rotation angle of knee is established