Development of a conceptual model for wrist and forearm rehabilitation robot with two degrees of freedom

People lose their ability to use their upper limbs (shoulder, elbow and wrist) or lower limbs (hip, knee and ankle) after a stroke, spinal cord injury or aging. These people need to follow rehabilitation exercises to recover their limb's lost movements. These rehabilitation activities consist of repetitive movement of affected limb which are predetermined by a physiotherapist. Because of the problems in the physiotherapist based rehabilitation processes, robotic systems are referred nowadays since these systems are well suited for repetitive and task based operations. In this thesis, three conceptual wrist/forearm rehabilitation robots are designed in a CAD program and each conceptual model is evaluated according to their degrees of freedom, ranges of motions and compatibility for wrist/forearm rehabilitation processes. One of the concept models is selected as the most suitable for rehabilitation activities and it is prototyped. Required tests are applied to check the compatibility of the design for rehabilitation activities.