Deans' stroke musings: A Pneumatic Robot for Re-Training Arm Movement after Stroke: Rationale and Mechanical Design

Changing stroke rehab and research worldwide now.Time is Brain! trillions and trillions of neurons that DIE each day because there are NO effective hyperacute therapies besides tPA(only 12% effective). I have 523 posts on hyperacute therapy, enough for researchers to spend decades proving them out. These are my personal ideas and blog on stroke rehabilitation and stroke research. Do not attempt any of these without checking with your medical provider. Unless you join me in agitating, when you need these therapies they won't be there.

What this blog is for:

My blog is not to help survivors recover, it is to have the 10 million yearly stroke survivors light fires underneath their doctors, stroke hospitals and stroke researchers to get stroke solved. 100% recovery. The stroke medical world is completely failing at that goal, they don't even have it as a goal. Shortly after getting out of the hospital and getting NO information on the process or protocols of stroke rehabilitation and recovery I started searching on the internet and found that no other survivor received useful information. This is an attempt to cover all stroke rehabilitation information that should be readily available to survivors so they can talk with informed knowledge to their medical staff. It lays out what needs to be done to get stroke survivors closer to 100% recovery. It's quite disgusting that this information is not available from every stroke association and doctors group.

Tuesday, February 7, 2012

A Pneumatic Robot for Re-Training Arm Movement after Stroke: Rationale and Mechanical Design

I think I like the Japanese one better.
http://gram.eng.uci.edu/~bobrow/papers_files/C54.pdf
Abstract—This paper describes the development of a
pneumatic robot for functional movement training of the arm
and hand after stroke. The device is based on the Wilmington
Robotic Exoskeleton (WREX), a passive, mobile arm support
developed for children with arm weakness caused by a
debilitative condition. Previously, we scaled WREX for use by
adults, instrumented it with potentiometers, and incorporated a
simple grip strength sensor. The resulting passive device
(Training WREX or “T-WREX”) allows individuals with
severe motor impairment to practice functional movements
(reaching, eating, and washing) in a simple virtual reality
environment called Java Therapy 2.0. However, the device is
limited since it can only apply a fixed pattern of assistive forces
to the arm. In addition, its gravity balance function does not
restore full range of motion. Therefore, we are also developing
a robotic version of WREX named Pneu-WREX, which can
apply a wide range of forces to the arm during naturalistic
movements. Pneu-WREX uses pneumatic actuators, non-linear
force control, and passive counter-balancing to allow
application of a wide range of forces during naturalistic upper
extremity movements. Besides a detailed description of the
mechanical design and kinematics of Pneu-WREX, we present
results from a survey of 29 therapists on the use of such a
robotic device.

Japanese one here:
http://oc1dean.blogspot.com/2011/09/upper-limb-rehabilitation-suit.html