• Journal of Institute of Control, Robotics and Systems
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• v.14 no.2
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• pp.197-204
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• 2008

The purpose of this paper was to develop a rehabilitation training system which is controlled by electric currents to the Magneto-Rheological dampers system. This system provided the function for the training of the unbalance of the lower extremities. 10 subjects executed the tracing and moving exercises which are presented through the display monitor and confirmed own the capability of performance on the task. The electromyographies of the four muscles in lower extremities were recorded and analyzed in the time and frequency domain the muscles of interest were rectus femoris, biceps femoris, gastrocnemius, tibialis anterior. The experimental results showed that subjects had a task under feedback mode then subjects improve the capability of performance, increasing the in time, decreasing the out time and the distance of body shift. The moving average EMG, spectral energy of four muscle is lower the feedback mode than the constant mode. This could aid the hemiplegic patients to train more easily.

• Journal of Institute of Control, Robotics and Systems
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• v.9 no.8
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• pp.577-584
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• 2003

Traditional ankle rehabilitation procedures are tedious, repetitive, and require therapist's help. Therefore, they do not provide patients with good motivation to actively participate in the rehabilitation exercises. In addition, objective diagnosis and evaluation of the treatment progress have been difficult because records of exercise history are made by passive instruments from time to time. The virtual reality technology can make these procedures more fun so that patients can perform everyday rehabilitation exercises more actively. Moreover, haptics technology can give active resistance to the patients ankle motion to improve strength of muscles as well as can record ankle's motion and force histories for objective diagnosis and evaluation. This paper summarizes development of a virtual environment fur reforming the conventional ankle rehabilitation procedures. First of all, conventional rehabilitation procedures have been summarized. Secondly, haptic design and control, user interface design, virtual environment contents design are described. Lastly, mutual cooperation among many developers including medical doctors and therapists and future works are commented.

• Journal of Institute of Control, Robotics and Systems
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• v.21 no.6
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• pp.503-509
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• 2015

In this paper, we designed and tested an ankle joint mechanism for a gait rehabilitation robot. Gait rehabilitation programs are designed to improve the natural leg motion of patients who have lost their walking capabilities by accident or disease. Strengthening the muscles of the lower-limbs and stimulation of the nervous system corresponding to walking helps patients to walk again using gait assistive devices. It is an obvious requirement that the rehabilitation system's motion should be similar to and as natural as the normal gait. However, the system being used for gait rehabilitation does not pay much attention to ankle joints, which play an important role in correct walking as the motion of the ankle should reflect the movement of the center of gravity (COG) of the body. Consequently, we have designed an ankle mechanism that ensures the safety of the patient as well as efficient gait training. Also, even patients with low leg muscle strength are able to operate the ankle joint due to the direct-drive mechanism without a reducer. This safety feature prevents any possible adverse load on the human ankle. The additional degree of freedom for the roll motion achieves a gait pattern which is similar to the normal gait and with a greater degree of comfort.

• Journal of Institute of Control, Robotics and Systems
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• v.21 no.5
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• pp.393-400
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• 2015

This paper describes the development of a chest-wearable robot that can efficiently perform self walking rehabilitation without a helper. The features of the developed robot are divided into three parts. First, as a mechanical characteristic, the conventional elbow crutch is attached at the forearm. However, the proposed robot is attached to the patient's chest, enabling them to feel free to use their hands and eliminate the burden of the arms. Second, as a characteristic of the driving algorithm, pressure sensors attached to the chest automatically perceive the patient's walking intention and move the robot-leg thereafter. Also, for safety, it stops operating when an obstacle is found in front of the patient by using ultrasonic sensors and generates a beeping sound. Finally, by using the scotch yoke mechanism, supporting legs are moved up and down using a rotary servo motor without excessive torque that is generated by large ground reaction forces. We showed that the developed robot can effectively perform self walking rehabilitation through walking experiments, and its performance was verified using Electromyograph (EMG) sensors.

• Journal of Institute of Control, Robotics and Systems
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• v.16 no.10
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• pp.939-947
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• 2010

With the rising numbers of elderly and disabled people, the demand for welfare services using a robotic system and not involving human effort is likewise increasing. This study deals with a mobile-robot system combined with a BWS (Body Weight Support) system for gait rehabilitation. The BWS system is designed via the kinematic analysis of the robot's body-lifting characteristics and of the walking guide system that controls the total rehabilitation system integrated in the mobile robot. This mobile platform is operated by utilizing the AGV (Autonomous Guided Vehicle) driving algorithm. Especially, the method that integrates geometric path tracking and obstacle avoidance for a nonholonomic mobile robot is applied so that the system can be operated in an area where the elderly users are expected to be situated, such as in a public hospital or a rehabilitation center. The mobile robot follows the path by moving through the turning radius supplied by the pure-pursuit method which is one of the existing geometric path-tracking methods. The effectiveness of the proposed method is verified through the real experiments those are conducted for path tracking with static- and dynamic-obstacle avoidance. Finally, through the EMG (Electromyography) signal measurement of the subject, the performance of the proposed system in a real operation condition is evaluated.

• Transactions of the Korean Society of Mechanical Engineers B
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• v.41 no.2
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• pp.125-133
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• 2017

This paper presents the inter-rater reliability of finger spasticity assessment tested realized by using finger simulator that mimics finger spasticity of patients after a stroke. For controlling the simulator torque, finger spasticity was modeled, and the model parameters were obtained by measuring quantitative data while grading based on Modified Ashworth Scale (MAS). A robotic finger simulator was designed for mimicking finger spasticity. Evaluation of this simulator with the help of seven rehabilitation doctors showed that the simulator had a Cohen's kappa value of 0.619 for Metacarpophalangeal Joint and 0.514 for Proximal Interphalangeal Joint. Fleiss' kappa between raters is 0.513 for Metacarpophalangeal Joint and 0.486 for Proximal Interphalangeal Joint. Therefore, the spasticity assessment made by MAS grade system is not reliable owing to the subjectivity of the assessment. The proposed robotic simulator can be used as a training tool for improving the reliability of the spasticity assessment.

• Proceedings of the IEEK Conference
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• 1999.06a
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• pp.763-768
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• 1999

The space variant imaging system which mimics the human beings visual system has some merits such as wide field-of-view, the low computational cost and the high accuracy in matching of correspondence points of stereo images. In this presentation, a visual servoing system based on the space variant imaging technique is proposed for the control of the rehabilitation robot arm. The position information of an object obtained by space variant imaging techniques is used for the visual servoing. According to the empirical data, the degree of correlation extracted by the space variant imaging technique is more accurate than that of the space invariant imaging technique.

• Journal of Sensor Science and Technology
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• v.21 no.3
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• pp.192-197
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• 2012

This paper describes the control of the hand fixing system attached to the finger rehabilitation robot for the rehabilitation exercise of patient's fingers. The finger rehabilitation robot is used to exercise the finger rehabilitation, and a patient's hand is safely fixed using the hand fixing system. In this paper, the hand fixing system was controlled with PD gains to fix a palm of the hand, and the characteristic test for the hand fixing system was carried out to sense the fixed hand movement of the front and the rear, that of the left and the right, and that of the upper. It is thought that the hand fixing system could safely fix the hand, and the movement of the fixed hand could be perceived using the five-axis force/moment sensor attached to the hand fixing system.

• Journal of Sensor Science and Technology
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• v.22 no.2
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• pp.118-123
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• 2013

Most serious stroke patients have the paralysis of their wrists, and can't use of their hands freely. But their wrists can be recovered by rehabilitation exercise. Recently, professional rehabilitation therapeutists exercise the wrists of stroke patients in hospital. But the wrists of stroke patients have not rehabilitated, because the therapeutists are much less than stroke patients in number. Therefore, the wrist bending-exercise rehabilitation robot that can measure the bending force of the patients' wrists is developed. In this paper, the three-axis force sensor was designed for the wrist bending-exercise rehabilitation robot. As a test results, the interference error of the three-axis force sensor was less than 0.85%. It is thought that the sensor can be used to measure the wrist bending force of the patient.

• Journal of Sensor Science and Technology
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• v.25 no.1
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• pp.27-34
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• 2016

This paper describes the development of a rehabilitation robot that can provide wrist bending exercise to a severe stroke patient staying in a bed ward or at home. The developed rehabilitation robot has a three-axis force sensor which detects three directional force Fx, Fy, and Fz. The sensor measures a bending force (Fz) exerted on the wrist and the signal force (Fx and Fy) which can be used for the safety purpose. The robot was designed for severe stroke patients in bed, and the robot program was developed to perform a wrist bending rehabilitation exercise. In our tests including a nine-day experimental exercise, the developed force sensor-based robot operated effectively and safely.