Kinematics, Dynamics and Control of an Upper Limb Rehabilitation Exoskeleton

Rehabilitation exoskeleton system is mainly developed for patients who suffered from hemiplegia and other sequelae caused by stroke. The system can assist or finally replace doctors to provide continuous and effective rehabilitation treatment. The paper presents an upper-limb rehabilitation exoskeleton system with 7 degrees of freedom using the Bowden cable actuation system. And an introduction about the mechanical structure is given. The kinematics and accessible workspace of exoskeleton is analyzed via Denavit-Hartenburg (D-H) approach and Monte Carlo method. Kane method is used to analyze the dynamic character of the robot. An admittance control algorithm is proposed to provide patient-active rehabilitation training in virtual environment. A preliminary comparison experiment is implemented to verify the effectiveness of the developed system and control strategy.