Design and Development of a Robot Guided Rehabilitation Scheme for Upper Extremity Rehabilitation

To rehabilitate individuals with impaired upper-limb function, we have designed and developed a robot guided rehabilitation scheme. A humanoid robot, NAO was used for this purpose. NAO has 25 degrees of freedom. With its sensors and actuators, it can walk forward and backward, can sit down and stand up, can wave his hand, can speak to the audience, can feel the touch sensation, and can recognize the person he is meeting. All these qualities have made NAO a perfect coach to guide the subjects to perform rehabilitation exercises. To demonstrate rehabilitation exercises with NAO, a library of recommended rehabilitation exercises involving shoulder (i.e., abduction/adduction, vertical flexion/extension, and internal/external rotation), and elbow (i.e., flexion/extension) joint movements was formed in Choregraphe (graphical programming interface). In experiments, NAO was maneuvered to instruct and demonstrate the exercises from the NRL. A complex ‘touch and play’ game was also developed where NAO plays with the subject that represents a multi-joint movement’s exercise. To develop the proposed tele-rehabilitation scheme, kinematic model of human upper-extremity was developed based modified Denavit-Hartenberg notations. A complete geometric solution was developed to find a unique inverse kinematic solution of human upper-extremity from the Kinect data. In tele-rehabilitation scheme, a therapist can remotely tele-operate the NAO in real-time to instruct and demonstrate subjects different arm movement exercises. Kinect sensor was used in this scheme to get tele-operator’s kinematics data. Experiments results reveals that NAO can be tele-operated successfully to instruct and demonstrate subjects to perform different arm movement exercises. A control algorithm was developed in MATLAB for the proposed robot guided supervised rehabilitation scheme. Experimental results show that the NAO and Kinect sensor can effectively be used to supervise and guide the subjects in performing active rehabilitation exercises for shoulder and elbow joint movements

Performance evaluation of water Jet Pump for Nozzle to throat area ratios on suction lift

"The experiment was about to study of water jet pumps with different diameters and nozzle-to-throat area ratios. Most experimental studies on water jet pumps mainly carried out to assess the maximum efficiency. But maximum efficiency occurs when the suction lift is relatively small for a given head loss through the pump, which implies, when the suction flow rate is maximum. However, suction lift is inversely proportional to flow rate. But in the field of application there are many cases (such as drainage, dredging, well-pumping and other systems) where suction lift is more important factor than any other for water jet pumps, which gives importance to the assessment of depending factor of suction lift of water jet pumps. Six different jet pumps of two different nominal diameter each of three different nozzle to throat area ratio were made to carry out this experiment. The results revealed that the nozzle-to-throat area ratio was an important parameter to characterize the suction lift of the jet pumps, but nominal diameter had a negligible play role

Design and Development of an Upper Limb Rehabilitative Robot with Dual Functionality

The design of an upper limb rehabilitation robot for post-stroke patients is considered a benchmark problem regarding improving functionality and ensuring better human–robot interaction (HRI). Existing upper limb robots perform either joint-based exercises (exoskeleton-type functionality) or end-point exercises (end-effector-type functionality). Patients may need both kinds of exercises, depending on the type, level, and degree of impairments. This work focused on designing and developing a seven-degrees-of-freedom (DoFs) upper-limb rehabilitation exoskeleton called ‘u-Rob’ that functions as both exoskeleton and end-effector types device. Furthermore, HRI can be improved by monitoring the interaction forces between the robot and the wearer. Existing upper limb robots lack the ability to monitor interaction forces during passive rehabilitation exercises; measuring upper arm forces is also absent in the existing devices. This research work aimed to develop an innovative sensorized upper arm cuff to measure the wearer’s interaction forces in the upper arm. A PID control technique was implemented for both joint-based and end-point exercises. The experimental results validated both types of functionality of the developed robot

Flexohand: A Hybrid Exoskeleton-Based Novel Hand Rehabilitation Device

Home-based hand rehabilitation has excellent potential as it may reduce patient dropouts due to travel, transportation, and insurance constraints. Being able to perform exercises precisely, accurately, and in a repetitive manner, robot-aided portable devices have gained much traction these days in hand rehabilitation. However, existing devices fall short in allowing some key natural movements, which are crucial to achieving full potential motion in performing activities of daily living. Firstly, existing exoskeleton type devices often restrict or suffer from uncontrolled wrist and forearm movement during finger exercises due to their setup of actuation and transmission mechanism. Secondly, they restrict passive metacarpophalangeal (MCP) abduction–adduction during MCP flexion–extension motion. Lastly, though a few of them can provide isolated finger ROM, none of them can offer isolated joint motion as per therapeutic need. All these natural movements are crucial for effective robot-aided finger rehabilitation. To bridge these gaps, in this research, a novel lightweight robotic device, namely “Flexohand”, has been developed for hand rehabilitation. A novel compliant mechanism has been developed and included in Flexohand to compensate for the passive movement of MCP abduction–adduction. The isolated and composite digit joint flexion–extension has been achieved by integrating a combination of sliding locks for IP joints and a wire locking system for finger MCP joints. Besides, the intuitive design of Flexohand inherently allows wrist joint movement during hand digit exercises. Experiments of passive exercises involving isolated joint motion, composite joint motions of individual fingers, and isolated joint motion of multiple fingers have been conducted to validate the functionality of the developed device. The experimental results show that Flexohand addresses the limitations of existing robot-aided hand rehabilitation devices