Design priorities for an at-home upper limb stroke rehabilitation robot.

Abstract

Objective: The design of at-home stroke rehabilitation robots must be closely linked to the needs of users, especially stroke survivors and therapists, to ensure that such designs are effective in the home environment, which is less controlled than clinical environments. Translating user needs into the technical descriptors of a design is essential to this design process. This paper analyses user needs identified from interviews with stroke survivors and therapists in previous work.

Methods: The relationship between user needs and the broad technical properties of rehabilitation robot design are related using the House of Quality, an approach from Quality Function Deployment. Technical benchmarks are identified from previous rehabilitation robot designs and technical priorities are determined from the House of Quality. An at-home upper limb stroke rehabilitation robot concept for supporting therapy activities in a vertical planar workspace is described and evaluated using the identified technical priorities.

Impact: The proposed design, a constrained cable robot, is determined to be appropriate for the desired application based on the technical priorities from the House of Quality.