Free Regressor Adaptive Impedance Control for Arm Rehabilitation Robot

This paper presents the development of an arm rehabilitation robot for patients who suffer from muscular dystrophies, stroke, or other disabilities of their arms. The arm rehabilitation robot focused is two-link single-joint manipulator. An impedance control scheme is implemented to organize interaction between the robot and the patient. A free regressor adaptive controller is designed to track the trajectory angular position of impedance control result. The error between the angular result of the impedance and the actual angular of the arm rehabilitation robot is guaranteed converge to zero by Lyapunov's stability theorem. The simulations consist of two cases. First, simulation of the rehabilitation robot by scheme control designed without external force applied and the second case is existing external force as the gravity force of the patient's forearm. Result shows that the mean errors of both simulations are -0.0075rad and -0.0064rad, respectively. Simulation result shows that proposed control scheme is effectiveness for the application.