Four-Joint Arm Rehabilitation Portable Device

Paralysis is the inability to control the muscle movement at certain parts of body. It happens when the nerve impulse transmitted from brain cannot be received by the muscle. The common reason to this occurrence is due to injury of spinal cord. Rehabilitation process can restore a person’s daily routine back to normal. Therefore, the portable four joint arm rehabilitation device is designed to improve the physiotherapist’s consistency and performance. Using the LabVIEW software, this device is able to monitor the muscle activities based on the collected data from FSR, elbow and wrist reading and display the muscle activity graphs. Thus, the muscle activity data of four joints movement could be analyzed by comparing the pressure classification between normal and paralyzed person. Result shows that the accuracy rate of this device is more than 80%. For future improvement, variable resistor can be added at shoulder joint to monitor the angle rotation and the design of the device could be upgraded into an adjustable device.