Design of a 3D Printed Miniature Model for Human-Robot Mechanism Coupling for Shoulder Rehabilitation

The use of upper limb rehabilitation robots has improved stroke patients' motor recovery while reducing the workload for physical therapists. Robot-supported training has the potential to be more intense, prolonged, repetitive, and task-focused than manual arm training. The design of robotic shoulder exoskeletons must take certain factors into account to align with the shoulder, which is the human body's most biomechanically complex joint. When using robotic exoskeletons for rehabilitation, it is crucial to support all shoulder degrees of freedom (DOFs) to maximize range of motion (ROM) and prevent joint axis misalignment between the robot and the user's shoulder, which could result in uncomfortable contact forces. The main objective of this research is to create a miniature intrinsically compliant robotic shoulder exoskeleton prototype that can aid researchers and clinicians in visually and physically analyzing the coupling between the human and robot. This will provide insights into the biomechanics of shoulder rehabilitation and the effects of different coupling strategies.