Bilateral Tele-Rehabilitation Control System Using Electrical Stimulation for Therapist and Patient

This paper considers a bilateral tele-rehabilitation control system by using an electrical stimulation. The therapist rehabilitates the patient who is far away from the therapist by using the electrical stimulation. The therapist also feels the reaction force which indicates the motion error between the therapist and the patient by utilizing the electrical stimulation. In previous our research, the haptic device has been used to feel the reaction force for the therapist. This paper uses the mechanical device only to constrict the range of motion of the therapist. The reaction force can be felt by means of the electrical stimulation. To detect the force which is provided by the therapist, the force sensor which is set on the haptic device is used in previous our works. This paper proposes to utilize the control input of the therapist and the velocity of the mechanical device to estimate the force provided by the therapist. First, the bilateral tele-rehabilitation control system with the modified force detection is proposed. The scattering matrix method as a stabilizing method for the time delay is applied, the stability condition is indicated. Next, the experimental equipment and the experimental result that the therapist's arm and the patient's knee joint are controlled are indicated. The stability and the control performance are verified from the experimental result. Copyright (C) 2020 The Authors.