Page 204 - Control Theory in Biomedical Engineering
P. 204
Medical robotics 185
number of examples. The end-effectors robots are more flexible than exo-
skeleton devices in fitting the different sizes of hands, reducing the setup
time, and increasing the usability for new patients. They suffer from the con-
trol of distal joints and haptic aspects of object manipulation. Nevertheless
their design is complex and a deep investigation of hand biomechanics and
physical human-robot interaction is required. Fig. 28 illustrates a number of
examples for upper lim rehabilitation devices. Exoskeletons, on the con-
trary, need to be adjusted to fit different sizes of hand due to their complex-
ity, and as a consequence, the geometric parameters also need to be updated
in the controller to guarantee the accuracy of the kinematic models. Fig. 29
illustrates an FDA-approved robotic exoskeleton (EksoGT, Ekso Bionics,
Inc. Richmond, CA, USA).
Table 2 summarizes popular commercial rehabilitation robotic devices,
whereas Table 3 presents commercial Exoskeleton devices. Fig. 30 shows
Fig. 28 Examples of rehabilitation devices for upper limb rehabilitation. (A) ARM Guide;
(B) InMotion ARM; (C) NeReBot; (D) ArmeoPower (Maciejasz et al., 2014); licensee
BioMed Central Ltd.