Toward a Standarized Robotics-Enabled Execution of Muscle Shortening Maneuver

The Muscle Shortening Maneuver (MSM) is a rehabilitation technique applicable to several pathological conditions. This approach involves passively elongating and shortening the targeted muscle group in the affected limb. Current rehabilitation centers implement these passive motions manually or through external actuators without feedback control, which can diminish the effectiveness and standardization of the MSM. In this research, we designed and developed a mechatronic device capable of accurately delivering the required motion to the upper limb. First, the motion parameters were extracted from therapy sessions conducted by experienced therapists at the rehabilitation clinic. Based on this information, the actuator was selected, and an experimental setup was developed. Sliding mode control with a sliding perturbation observer was implemented for precise motion control. Experiments were conducted on one healthy participant to validate the performance of the developed device. The results, although preliminary, suggest that our system is capable of producing oscillation within the desired motion range