Hand Rehabilitation Robot using Electromyography - Biomechatronics in Medicine and Healthcare - page 74

Chapter Six

Hand Rehabilitation Robot using
Electromyography

Sze Kit Ho ∗ , Raymond Kai-Yu Tong ∗ ,MoChen ∗ , Hong Fu Zhou ∗ ,
Peter Man Kit Pang ∗ , Xiao Ling Hu ∗ and Tai Wai Chan †
∗ Department of Health Technology and Informatics and The Hong Kong Polytechnic
University, Hung Hom, Kowloon, Hong Kong SAR, China
† Industrial Centre, The Hong Kong Polytechnic University, Hung Hom, Kowloon,
Hong Kong SAR, China

6.1 INTRODUCTION TO REHABILITATION ROBOTS

As technologies advance and better understanding of the stroke recovery, robots
have caught the attention of the therapist and technologist that it can be used
for rehabilitation because it can repetitively provide precise movements, collect
good quantifiable measurements and never get tired from the long working hours.
One of the first pioneers in robotic rehabilitation for upper extremities was the
MIT Manus (Krebs et al . 1999). It supports the arm of the stroke patient on a
horizontal plane and provides guided training of elbow and shoulder movements
with visual, auditory and tactile feedbacks. A similar robotic training device is the
Mirror-Image Motion Enabler (MIME) which uses the unimpaired arm to guide
the shoulder and elbow movements of the impaired arm during bilateral training
(Burgar et al . 2000). Another robotic device is the Bi-Manu-Track which trains
the bilateral arm movement at the wrist joints (Hesse et al . 2003). As described
in chapter 5 , an upper and lower limbs rehabilitation robot named PolyJBot was
developed to assist stroke subjects to actively train their wrist, elbow, ankle and
knee joints using their own electromyography (EMG) as the intention driven
signals (Tong and Hu 2008). Instead of passively trained by the robot, subjects
are motivated to actively use their muscles during the training.