Modelagem dos movimentos funcionais robótico-assistidos para a reabilitação dos membros superiores: redução dos graus de liberdade de um manipulador antropomórfico

Abstract

Rehabilitation robotics involves the development of active devices for various processes in the health field. In the rehabilitation case, it replace the physical assistance by a robotic device, under the supervision of the therapist. According to some authors, there is much evidence that repetitive movements can help in the rehabilitation of stroke patients. Therefore, there is feasibility of building a low cost robotic manipulator of an anthropomorphic arm with few degrees of freedom in the rehabilitation of patients in early brain injury phase (muscle hypotony phase). The objective of the study outlined here is to determine, through simulation, the appropriate kinematic of an anthropomorphic robotic manipulator that best approximate the functional movements to be relearned by stroke patients. The kinemetry was the method used to measure the characteristics of these movements. The data acquisition was performed from three subjects who performed the movements of combing hair, drinking from cup, bring it to his mouth and waving, greeting movement. These data were compared with the direct and inverse kinematics of the simulated manipulator in MatLab environment. The results showed that, despite the limitations of movements, the simulated manipulator is feasible for rehabilitation of patients who are in the initial phase of stroke, with a low cost of implementation.