Coordinated control of assistive robotic devices for activities of daily living tasks

Recent research in rehabilitation indicates that tasks that focus on activities of daily living (ADL) are likely to show significant increase in motor recovery after stroke. Most ADL tasks require patients to coordinate their arm and hand movements to complete these tasks. This paper presents a new control approach for robot-assisted rehabilitation of stroke patients that enables them to perform ADL by providing controlled and coordinated assistance to both arm and hand movement. The control architecture is represented in terms of a hybrid system model combining a high-level controller for decision-making and two low-level assistive controllers (arm and hand controllers) for arm and hand motion assistance. The presented controller is implemented on a test-bed and the results of this implementation are presented to demonstrate the feasibility of the proposed control architecture.