Development of a Soft Actuated Upper Extremity Exoskeleton Employing Series Elastic Actuator for Post Stroke Rehabilitation

The integration of robotic devices and conventional physiotherapy is becoming more and more acceptable worldwide. When an exoskeleton is in the conceptual design phase, the actuator selection is one of the most crucial sections. In this paper a rotary Seies Elastic Actuator(SEA) is introduced, designed and developed for upper limb application used in the rehabilitation exoskeleton. Albeit the SEA had been used in the lower extremity,it is not utilized for the upper limbrehabilitation yet. This paper will design,implement and analyze the advantages of using SEA in the upper limb instead of conventional electric motors and shows the stability of this system when implemented on the proposed exoskeleton. Actually the designed exoskeleton is performing simultaneous tasks of elbow and shoulder flexion/extension by means of just one electric motor and a SEA mounted on the elbow joint.

Keywords:

Cable-driven exoskeleton , Post stroke patients , Series Elastic Actuator , Upper limb rehabilitation