DefinePK

Abstract

There is a group of patients especially stroke and spinal cord injury that suffering from loss of moving in a particular limb or have hemiplegia needs continuously physiotherapy exercises in order to restore the movement of the limb even a fraction. So, in this study, a device was designed to perform the physical therapy for this group of patients in order to rehabilitate the affected limb. This device called Exoskeleton. The basic principles of the exoskeleton are its dependence on electromyography signal; MyoWare sensor was used to measure surface electromyography signal, this signal goes to the microcontroller which in turn gives the order to the motor to move the actuator arm through a Bowden cable. The exoskeleton is one degree of freedom performs the flexion and extension of the elbow joint. After the design was completed, the exoskeleton was examined on 4 normal persons and then applied to 15 stroke patients and 4 spinal cord injury patients. After several sessions of physiotherapy exercises, the results showed that the benefit of the exoskeleton in strengthening the muscles as well as in increasing the elbow range of motion and in this way the exoskeleton has proven its possible to perform physiotherapy exercises, especially for stroke patients.