Study on Assistive Robot Manipulator for Arm Kinesitherapeutic Exercise

Aiming at the reduction of therapist burden in rehabilitation exercises, the authors have developed a technology to make a robot manipulator to be an assistive worker in kinesitherapy rehabilitation exercises by physical therapists. As for the kinesitherapy exercises, there are an exercise to sustain and to increase the arm joint's mobile range, an exercise to strengthen the muscle power and muscle endurance, and an exercise to train the muscle coordination function. This paper described some key technologies for the robot-aided assistive system : (1) a method to implement the four kinds of kinesitherapy exercises, (2) methods to estimate physical parameters were explained. The effectiveness of these methods was clarified by the practical experiments with a patient manipulator and an able-bodied person.