Design and Prototyping of a Cable-Driven Parallel Robot for At-Home Upper Extremity Rehabilitation

At-home stroke rehabilitation robots could improve access to rehabilitation therapies for stroke survivors. However, as the home is a challenging environment for design, it is essential that such designs are closely linked to stakeholder needs. This paper continues previous work by the authors linking stakeholder needs to the design of an at-home stroke rehabilitation robot for the upper limb. The proposed design is a constrained cable robot with a vertical workspace, capable of supporting and measuring the motion of a stroke survivor’s arm and hand during therapy activities, with a modular end effector design to simulate a variety of activities of daily living. The technical requirements of the design are described and linked to research on therapy activities, activities of daily living, and anthropometry. The kinematic and dynamic requirements for the design are validated in experiments. Potential improvements for the design include adding powered hand modules to assist users with hand impairments, adding a third rotational degree of freedom, and investigating parallel-spring motor designs that could reduce power consumption.