This paper presents the results of a clinical trial employing the PERCRO L-Exos (Light-Exoskeleton) system, which is a 5-DoF force-feedback exoskeleton for the right arm, for robotic-assisted rehabilitation. The device has demonstrated itself suitable for robotic arm rehabilitation therapy when integrated with a Virtual Reality (VR) system. Three different schemes of therapy in VR have been tested in the clinical evaluation trial, which was conducted at the Santa Chiara Hospital in Pisa with nine chronic stroke patients. The results of this clinical trial, both in terms of patients performance improvements in the proposed exercises and in terms of improvements in the standard clinical scales which have been used to monitor patients progresses will be reported and discussed throughout the paper. It is to be noted that statistically significant improvements have been demonstrated in terms of Fugl-Meyer scores, Ashworth scale and increments of active and passive ROMs on shoulder, elbow and wrist joints of the impaired limb.

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This paper presents a concept of an upper-limb power assist intelligent exoskeleton with visual information as a second stage of the research on power-assist exoskeleton systems in order to help daily activities of physically weak persons. The proposedexoskeleton assists not only the motion of the user but also the perception of the user using sensors and a stereo camera. In the proposed power-assist method, the assisted user’s motion can be modified based on the environmental information obtained by the sensors and the camera if problems are found in the user’s motion. The effectiveness of the proposed intelligent exoskeletonwas evaluated by experiments.

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