Design of wrist rehabilitation device for hemiplegic patients

Abstract

There have been some devices for rehabilitations of upper limb such as electronic device and mechanical device which is well-known as the passive one. These devices make the motion of upper limbs and stimulate the wrist, elbow, shoulder joints with muscles. This motion does by using the patient's normal hand (left or right hand) and rotating the wounded hand's wrist to be recovered by the clockwise or counterclockwise with some angles. Electronic devices for upper limb rehabilitation have the advantage that the electronic ones can supply various rehabilitation exercises to the patients. However these electronic devices include relatively expensive components such as various kinds of sensors, controllers, and display device. Therefore, the prices of implementation are too expensive. On the other hand, in conventional passive upper limb rehabilitation, the patients grasp the both handles without any mechanical links. It does not supply proper rehabilitation motion because the normal hand does not supply the rehabilitation motion to hand to be recovered. So to speak, this is not proper to patients with the one hands trouble such as hemiplegic patients, by himself without the aids of any other persons. In this paper, we describe the mechanical device for rehabilitations of wrist and the proposed handles to be attached in this mechanical device. This proposed handles can generate the three angle motion of wrist such as the roll, pitch and yaw. This proposed device has some features that this device can be implemented with lower costs than electronic devices and can be used whatever the wounded hand is right or left by selecting the lever. Further, when the patient has the rehabilitation exercise intent, the patients can easily use the proposed upper limb rehabilitation devices without the aid of the rehabilitation therapist the energy source is the normal hands of the patients. © (2015) Trans Tech Publications.