NEUROExos: A Powered Elbow Exoskeletonfor Physical Rehabilitation

You really think your hospital is going to afford this? They can't even get you music players to help with rehab costing $18.00 or tell you how to get a music app on your phone. 

• music (94 posts back to March 2011)

• music therapy (53 posts back to October 2014)

• musical training (13 posts back to June 2014)

THAT IS HOW INCOMPETENT YOUR STROKE HOSPITAL IS.

  NEUROExos: A Powered Elbow Exoskeletonfor Physical Rehabilitation

 Nicola Vitiello , Member, IEEE
, Tommaso Lenzi, Student Member, IEEE
, Stefano Roccella,Stefano Marco Maria De Rossi, Student Member, IEEE
, Emanuele Cattin, Francesco Giovacchini,Fabrizio Vecchi, Member, IEEE
, and Maria Chiara Carrozza, Member, IEEE

 Abstract

—This paper presents the design and experimental testing of the robotic elbow exoskeleton NEUROBOTICS Elbow Exoskeleton (NEUROExos). The design of NEUROExos focused on three solutions that enable its use for post stroke physical rehabilitation. First, double-shelled links allow an ergonomic physical human–robot interface and, consequently, a comfortable interaction. Second, a four-degree-of-freedom passive mechanism, em-bedded in the link, allows the user’s elbow and robot axes to beconstantly aligned during movement. The robot axis can passively rotate on the frontal and horizontal planes 30^◦ and 40^◦, respectively, and translate on the horizontal plane 30 mm. Finally, a variable impedance antagonistic actuation system allows NEUROExos to be controlled with two alternative strategies: independent con-trol of the joint position and stiffness, for robot-in-charge rehabilitation mode, and near-zero impedance torque control, for patient-in-charge rehabilitation mode. In robot-in-charge mode, the passive joint stiffness can be changed in the range of 24–56 N·m/rad. Inpatient in charge mode, NEUROExos output impedance ranges from 1 N·m/rad, for 0.3 Hz motion, to 10 N·m/rad, for 3.2 Hzmotion.