Customizable Robotic Device for Arm and Hand Rehabilitation of Hemiplegic Patient at Home

Home-based upper-limb rehabilitation robot is required for the hemiplegic patient to continue the rehabilitation after discharge from the hospital. Many researchers have been proposing robots dividing into body parts such as robot for arm rehabilitation and for hand rehabilitation. However, rehabilitation robots specialized for a certain body part are difficult to introduce because the patient needs to purchase a robot for each body part. To overcome this problem, we have been developing the upper-limb rehabilitation robot which can rehabilitation both the arm and the hand only by single unit. Our key idea is customizability. The robot is designed so that it is easy to assemble. We found that our robot has possibility to monitor and assist the user’s rehabilitation while changing its hardware from experimental result.