Parallel Articulated-Cable Exercise Robot (PACER): Novel Home-Based Cable-Driven Parallel Platform Robot for Upper Limb Neuro-Rehabilitation

This paper examines the design, analysis and control of a novel hybrid articulated-cable parallel platform for upper limb rehabilitation in three dimensional space. The proposed lightweight, low-cost, modular reconfigurable parallel-architecture robotic device is comprised of five cables and a single linear actuator which connects a six degrees-of-freedom moving platform to a fixed base. This novel design provides an attractive architecture for implementation of a home-based rehabilitation device as an alternative to bulky and expensive serial robots. The manuscript first examines the kinematic analysis prior to developing the dynamic equations via the Newton-Euler formulation. Subsequently, different spatial motion trajectories are prescribed for rehabilitation of subjects with arm disabilities. A low-level trajectory tracking controller is developed to achieve the desired trajectory performance while ensuing that the unidirectional tensile forces in the cables are maintained. This is now evaluated via a simulation case-study and the development of a physical testbed is underway.