Design and acceptability assessment of a new reversible orthosis

Nathanaël Jarrassé (1, 2) , J. Robertson (3) , Philippe Garrec (4) , Viviane Pasqui (1, 2) , Yann Perrot (4) , Agnès Roby-Brami (5) , D. Wang (6) , Guillaume Morel (1, 2)

1 ISIR - Institut des Systèmes Intelligents et Robotique
2 AGATHE - Assistance aux Gestes et Applications THErapeutiques
3 Hôpital Raymond Poincaré [AP-HP]
4 DIASI (CEA, LIST) - Département Intelligence Ambiante et Systèmes Interactifs
5 LNPC - Laboratoire de Neurobiologie et Physiologie Comparées
6 NRS (U7060) - Neurobiologie des réseaux sensorimoteurs

— We present a new device aimed at being used for upper limb rehabilitation. Our main focus was to design a robot capable of working in both the passive mode (i.e. the robot shall be strong enough to generate human-like movements while guiding the weak arm of a patient) and the active mode (i.e. the robot shall be able of following the arm without disturbing human natural motion). This greatly challenges the design, since the system shall be reversible and lightweight while providing human compatible strength, workspace and speed. The solution takes the form of an orthotic structure, which allows control of human arm redundancy contrarily to clinically available upper limb rehabilitation robots. It is equipped with an innovative transmission technology, which provides both high gear ratio and fine reversibility. In order to evaluate the device and its therapeutic efficacy, we compared several series of pointing movements in healthy subjects wearing and not wearing the orthotic device. In this way, we could assess any disturbing effect on normal movements. Results show that the main movement characteristics (direction, duration, bell shape profile) are preserved.

Domaines: Automatique / Robotique

Nathanaël Jarrassé, J. Robertson, Philippe Garrec, Viviane Pasqui, Yann Perrot, et al.. Design and acceptability assessment of a new reversible orthosis. International Conference on Intelligent Robots and Systems, IEEE, Sep 2008, Nice, France. pp.1933-1939, ⟨10.1109/IROS.2008.4651014⟩. ⟨cea-01175507⟩