Research Information System
Istanbul International Modern Scientific Research Congress –III, İstanbul, Turkey, 6 - 08 May 2022, pp.242-254
Robotic systems have great advantages in performing regular and repetitive tasks in the field of physical therapy and rehabilitation. The aging of the world population and the numerical increase of individuals with physical limitations require more attention to rehabilitation robots. Therefore, especially in the last two decades, significant rehabilitation robot studies have been carried out on many body parts. Despite many studies on wrist joint, which plays an important role in the performing of activities of daily living, there is no commercial product with widespread use in physical therapy centers. The acceptance process after clinical tests and high costs cause a gap between commercial products and research designs. In this case, the individuals with disability remain a poor quality of life because of pain or dependence on another one. In order to overcome these challenges in a new design, dozens of studies in the literature are examined in detail with many different design properties. The performing ability of pronation/supination, radial/ulnar deviation, and flexion/extension movements which are used to provide orientation to hand in daily activities is taken as the main design criteria of a new robot design. Other design guidelines are determined for a low cost system based on easy manufacturing and fast spreading. In this study, a new wrist rehabilitation robot called POWROBOT is proposed and detailed manufacturing properties are given with figures. On the other hand, this robot includes a specially designed 3-axis force sensor unit to ensure high patient-robot interaction in assistive exercises. Microcontrollerbased electronic boards running with embedded code are specially designed to control and manage the whole robot system. An additional electronic board ensures safety and power management while performing exercises. The proposed robot has a portable bag structure and contains both mechanical system and electronic boards. So the robot can be easily used in both the home environment and physical therapy centers with high safety features.