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Access Type

WSU Access

Date of Award

January 2021

Degree Type

Dissertation

Degree Name

Ph.D.

Department

Biomedical Engineering

First Advisor

Chaoyang Chen

Second Advisor

Mahendra Kavdia

Abstract

Abstract DESIGN AND DEVELOPMENT OF BIONIC 3D PRINTED UPPER-LIMB EXOSKELETON FOR STROKE REHABILITATION

Those who have had a stroke need long-term physical rehabilitation treatments. The conventional manual hands-on method is time-consuming and cannot offer low-cost, long-term rehabilitation services. Furthermore, the hands-on method is subjective and is dependent on the competence level of physiotherapists. To address these problems, more research and effort are being directed into the development of robotic-assisted rehabilitation technologies. For decades, upper-limb exoskeleton devices have been researched and developed for upper-limb rehabilitation. Some products have been tested on post-stroke patients. However, there are many limits and problems in this field. It currently needs a bionic mechanical design for the upper-limb exoskeleton, focusing mainly on human-machine joint misalignment. Furthermore, upper-limb exoskeleton volitional control is still far from acceptable.In this study, previous attempts to develop an upper-limb exoskeleton were discussed. Important challenges related to mechanical exoskeleton design and control strategy development were undertaken. A new robot control mechanism, known as the mirror or synchronous motion-control method, was developed, as well as tactics for promoting robotic systems in clinical usage. Six healthy individuals participated in an experiment to verify the performance of the motion-controlled upper-limb (UL) exoskeleton. In a 2D panel, the UL exoskeleton executed sketching movements based on the UL movements of a healthy participant. To evaluate the accuracy of the drawing performance, the drawings produced by the UL exoskeleton were compared to drawings done by the participant. To evaluate the inter-rater agreement between the drawings, and thus evaluate UL exoskeleton performance, a reliability statistical study (Cronbach test) was conducted and an image comparison using Python was performed to see the accuracy.

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