Synchronization of Arm and Hand Assistive Robotic Devices to Impart Activities of Daily Living Tasks

Recent research in rehabilitation indicates that tasks that focus on activities of daily living (ADL) is likely to show significant increase in motor recovery after stroke. Most ADL tasks require patients to coordinate their arm and hand movements to complete ADL tasks. This paper presents a new control approach for robot assisted rehabilitation of stroke patients that enables them to perform ADL tasks by providing controlled and coordinated assistance to both arm and hand movements. The control architecture uses hybrid system modelling technique which consists of a high-level controller for decision-making and two low-level assistive controllers (arm and hand controllers) for arm and hand motion assistance. The presented controller is implemented on a test-bed and the results of this implementation are presented to demonstrate the feasibility of the proposed control architecture.