Current robotic devices for rehabilitation after stroke are often large and complex as they are conceived to train arbitrary movements in the 3D space. This paper analyzes the minimal requirements that the workspace of a robotic device should have in order to promote training of principal activities of daily living, considering the shoulder movement’s limitations of subacute patients. Pick-and-place, drinking and eating movements of five healthy subjects were analyzed. In all these three tasks, approximately 82% of all trials deviate laterally less than 5% of the target distance and we recommend target distances of less than 40% of the arm length in order to minimize improper shoulder movements. The study can be applied for designing simpler, yet efficient robotic devices for rehabilitation of the upper limb or for constraining exercises on existing ones when dealing with stroke patients, especially for those prone to shoulder complications (e.g. subacute patients).

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In this paper, we present a hand rehabilitation system for patients suffering from paralysis or contracture. It consist of two components: a hand rehabilitation machine, which moves human finger joints using motors, and a data glove, which enables controlling the movement of the finger joints attached to the rehabilitation machine. The machine is based on the arm structure type of hand rehabilitation machine; a motor indirectly moves a finger joint via a closed four-link mechanism. We employ a wire-driven mechanism and coupled mechanism for DIP and PIP joints. These mechanism render the machine lightweight, and offer wider range of motion than conventional systems. The design specifications of the mechanisms and experimental results are shown.

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A new type of master robot for teleoperation is proposed. In the proposed master robot, several wires are stretched from a handle which is moved by a human operator. In this paper, the authors explain how many wires are necessary to control a handle with six degrees of freedom in a three dimensional space. Moreover, to feed forces from a slave robot to the handle, an algorithm to determine each wire tension is proposed. Finally, they show experimental results in which a handle is moved by seven wires in a three dimensional space

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The six contributed papers in this special issue focus on the theme of lower extremity exoskeletons for gait rehabilitation.

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We have developed the exoskeletal robotics suite HAL (Hybrid Assistive Leg) which is integrated with human and assists suitable power for lower limb of people with gait disorder. This study proposes the method of assist motion and assist torque to realize a power assist corresponding to the operator’s intention. In the method of assist motion, we adopted Phase Sequence control which generates a series of assist motions by transiting some simple basic motions called Phase. We used the feedback controller to adjust the assist torque to maintain myoelectricity signals which were generated while performing the power assist walking. The experiment results showed the effective power assist according to operator’s intention by using these control, methods.

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