Wire-based robots for upper-limb rehabilitation

Wire-based robots for upper-limb rehabilitation

&nbsp;&nbsp;In the last decades, many specialized research centers attempted to employ robots in the rehabilitation field. Especially orthopedic rehabilitation and neurorehabilitation benefited from these cutting-edge technologies. Although a broad literature on the benefits of robot-assisted rehabilitation assesses the effectiveness of the direction taken by scientists, only in few cases a robotic lab-oriented prototype leaded to a commercial robot. This apparent contradiction should not deter researchers from continuing improving robotic tools and related rehabilitation protocols. On the contrary, it should be a starting point for a new generation of rehabilitation robots capable of shrinking the gap between academic lab-oriented ideas and affordable clinical solutions.<BR>&nbsp;&nbsp;According to this philosophy, several underrated problems are to be taken into account. In particular a rehabilitation robot has to be cost-affordable, lightweight, easily transportable and equipped with a user-friendly interface suitable for non trained operators. Moreover, not only safety issues need to be fully addressed but also the tolerability of the robot by the patient.<BR>&nbsp;&nbsp;Starting from these considerations, a new generation of wire-based robots for upper-limb rehabilitation is proposed. In particular, the work focuses on 2 wire？based prototypes which can be classified according to the number of degrees of freedom (DoF): the NeReBot (NEuroREhabilitation roBOT, 3 DoF) and the MariBot (MARIsa roBOT, 5 DoF). Experimental results performed in a clinical environment showed the effectiveness of the wire-based robot-assisted rehabilitation. At the same time, they helped to trace new guidelines for future work.