Workspace analysis of upper limb for a planar cable-driven parallel robots toward upper limb rehabilitation

Nowadays robotic technology is widely used in rehabilitation especially in stroke rehabilitation. Comparing conventional robots, cable-driven parallel robots have many advantages such as low moving inertia, high power efficiency, large workspace, low cost, and so forth. On this account, three-degree-of-freedom (3-DOF) cable-driven parallel for upper limb rehabilitation is currently under development. This paper presents motion analysis of upper limb to design a 3-DOF upper limb rehabilitation robot. Main feature of this rehabilitation robot is to provide the relatively large workspace and to be less dangerous in the situation of robot´s malfunction due to reduced moving part. Since our rehabilitation is being designed to have a planar workspace, the motion of upper limb is also analyzed in a plane.