Ergonomics-based Design And Analysis For An Upper/lower Limb Rehabilitation Training Apparatus

Treatment and rehabilitation are both important in the modern clinical medicine.Patients with physical disabilities need higher quality rehabilitation treatment, but limitedrehabilitation physicians can’t satisfy the needs of rehabilitation treatment for largenumber of patients. Rehabilitation robots can help rehabilitation physicians do lots ofwork. The growing demand for rehabilitation robots impels scholars and companies allover the word to give more attention to it, and makes the research have important socialsignificance and value.On the basis of clinical rehabilitation medicine theory, the paper introduces arehabilitation robot which can comply with the law of clinical rehabilitation training. Forthe patients with different degrees of damage and rehabilitation requirements, therehabilitation robot can provide the passive training, the active assist training, the activetraining, the impedance training and the functional electrical stimulation training modes.And the rehabilitation effectiveness of the patients can be evaluated quantitatively bydynamometry on the robot. The rehabilitation robot has good human-machine fusiontechnology, simple mechanical structure and intuitive human-computer interface, and itcan be moved conveniently. The height of the training apparatus could be adjusted toadapt to the requirements of patients.First of all, a part of the rehabilitation robot structure was redesigned on the basis ofergonomics theory, which makes the robot more comfortable and maneuverable.Secondly, combining with the limbs and the rehabilitation robot, and considering themotion characteristics and physiological characteristics of the limbs, this paper proposeda space rigid model of four-bar mechanism for upper limb training and a plane rigidmodel of four-bar mechanism for lower limb training. The kinematics mathematicalmodel for upper limbs training and the dynamic mathematical model for lower limbstraining were established.Thirdly, the paper puts forward the control strategy for the passive training, theactive assist training and the impedance training briefly, based on the theory of HAM. By ADAMS simulation software, the kinematics and dynamics of the human-machine modelwere validated.Finally, virtual body and rehabilitation robot can be combined together in theman-machine engineering analysis module of CATIA V5. Whether the adjustable rangeof height of the training apparatus and the length of crank can meet the requirements wasassessed by CATIA V5. The comfort level of limbs influenced by the height of the chairand the length between the chair and the training apparatus is analyzed. And the comfortlevel of limbs can reflects the rehabilitation results.