Impedance-based control of a cable driven rehabilitation robot

In this thesis, the design concept, electronic components, control method and software algorithm of a rehabilitation robot, Romres, are presented. Romres is a neurological rehabilitation device, which can make patients do exercises for both upper and lower limbs within a wide range of motion. The most important property of Romres is that it has a special design, which allows doing intensive treatment to the patients, who are in the immobilization period, without any inconvenience for a long time. Romres rehabilitation robot can make three type of exercises. These are the passive exercise, the active assisted exercise and the spasticity exercise. The robot can decide to choose which type of exercise to apply to the patient depending on the force applied to the device by the patient. Impedance control is used as the control method. The control system supported with a disturbance observer for compensating friction and other disturbances and a rule based external controller. The performance of the robot is tested with custom-engineered test apparatus and a person. The results of these experiments are shown.