Design Of A Parallel Robot For Head/Neck Rehabilitation

Head Dyskinesia or Head Drop Syndrome(DHS)is very common in motor neuron diseases.Patients with this syndrome usually have weakened neck muscles,and it is difficult for them to raise or move their head independently.Until today,there still exists no best treatment for this disease,but static cervical collars are often used to relieve the symptoms of DHS.However,most cervical collars cannot meet the needs of DHS patients since these collars restrict all movements of patients’ head and cannot be adjusted as needed.Therefore,designing a dynamic cervical collar or a cervical spine rehabilitation robot that is multifunctional and can be applied to clinical treatment,be operated easily,be used under sufficient methods of rehabilitation,is of great significance for the rehabilitation of DHS.In this thesis,a cervical spine rehabilitation robot based on the parallel mechanism is proposed.The robot can be applied to the process of cervical spine rehabilitation training for patients who suffer from the inability of moving their heads caused by DHS.The design combines technology of biological anatomy,bio-kinematics,robotics,virtual modeling and control theory.And based on these tools,this thesis finishes works including analyzing of human cervical structure,mechanism prototype designing,kinematics analyzing,parameter optimizations and control simulation.Firstly,this thesis analyzes the pros and cons of various cervical spine rehabilitation equipment such as cervical braces and rehabilitation robots,and investigates relevant products and researches in the domestic and overseas fields of research.A review on the status of parallel mechanisms that process similar motion patterns compared with the biokinematics of human cervical spine and suitable for the desired rehabilitation purpose is also made.Secondly,taking the structure of the human cervical spine as the research object,the natural movement ranges that the human head can reach are determined,and the movement includes: sagittal plane flexion/extension,mediolateral bending and rotation.The physiological ranges of these motions provide the design criterion for the robot designing.And based on that,the detailed structure of the robot is designed and its motion performance has also been evaluated and verified.Then,the kinematic parameters of the rehabilitation robot such as the degree of freedom,forward and inverse solutions,Jacobian matrix and singularity are analyzed.Moreover,static forces of the human cervical spine,the moving platform and connecting rods are analyzed as well.The coupling motion characteristics of the robot during moving process are researched both theoretically and experimentally,and the robot’s working space is also obtained.As a result of that,the robot’s ability of accommodating the neck’s coupling motion as well as the safety of the robot are guaranteed.In the end,based on inverse kinematics,the robot’s required actuation inputs under desired mechanisms of recovery are calculated,providing the basis for the controller design.And a virtual prototype is built,which verifies the overall performance of the rehabilitation robot.There are 67 figures,9 tables and 77 references in this thesis.