Performance-based Assistance Control for Upper Limb Robotic Mirror Therapy

As an effective therapy for treating unilateral neglect, Mirror Therapy (MT) is employed in the upper limb motor function rehabilitation of hemiplegic patients. However, traditional MT has a serious limitation—the Impaired Limb (IL) doesn’t actually move. In this study, a novel performance-based assistance strategy suitable for Robotic Mirror Therapy (RMT) based on MT is proposed. A guiding assistance based on the progress difference HL and IL is constructed in trajectory guidance, and a multi-stiffness region correction force field based on trajectory tracking error is designed to constrain IL’s deviation from the intended path in trajectory correction assistance. To validate the presented strategy, a series of experiments on a RMT system based on the end-effector upper limb rehabilitation robot are conducted. The results verify the performance and feasibility of this strategy.