Wearable handling support system for paralyzed patient

Abstract

This paper introduces a new wearable handling support system for a person who has trouble in motor capability of his or her upper limb. The support system is used as not only a support system to make his upper limb active in daily life but also a rehabilitation system to reduce manual loads of physical therapists. The system measures three rotation angles of patientpsilas head: pitch, roll and yaw to control three degrees of freedom of the support system; angle of elbow joint, angle of wrist joint and hand close/open, respectively. Hemiplegia patient who has paralysis of one half of the patient body can use both arms cooperatively by wearing the handling support system on the paralysis side. In our experiments, the system helps pouring task from POP bottle to a glass, while an upper limb on paralysis side of a user grasps the POP bottle and the other upper limb grasps the glass.