Development of Wrist Rehabilitation Device Using Extension Type Flexible Pneumatic Actuators with Simple 3D Coordinate Measuring System

Rehabilitation devices have been developed to assist patients to recover from physical disabilities by using specific devices to do exercise, training and therapy. The purpose of this study is to develop a home-based rehabilitation device that is safe to use and without the requirement of a person in charge. In this study, a simple home-based wrist rehabilitation device that can give passive exercise on spherical orbit while patients hold its handles is proposed and tested. The device has two moving handling stages driven by six extension type flexible pneumatic actuators on two hemispherical acrylic domes. The device can give passive exercise for the upper limb by changing the relative position of the patient’s hands. In this paper, the construction and operating principles of the tested device are described. A low-cost 3-dimensional coordinate measuring system using two wire-type linear potentiometers to control the position of the holding stages is also described. In addition, the tracking position control of the holding handles on a sphere is carried out. As a result, it can be found that the handling stage of the tested device can trace the desired orbit based on the coordinates measured from a 3-dimensional coordinate measuring system. It can be confirmed that the tested wrist rehabilitation device has the possibility to apply passive movements to the wrist along the desired orbit while patients hold its handles.