ERRSE: Elbow robotic rehabilitation system with an EMG-based force control

Robotic devices for rehabilitation purposes have been increasingly studied in the past two decades and are becoming more and more diffused, due to their effective support to the traditional therapy. They allow to automate in a repeatable manner the rehabilitative exercises and to quantify outcomes, giving important feedback to the therapist. This paper deals with the design, development and preliminary characterization of a robotic system, with an exoskeleton device, for assisted upper-limb rehabilitation, in which surface EMG measurements are used to implement a force-based active and resistive control. A prototype of the system has been realized, measurements of important parameters of the motion permitted to optimize the design and preliminary tests on the control strategy were carried out.