5 Conclusion and outlook
A new semi-exoskeleton arm rehabilitation robot called
ARMin has been developed and tested with numerous
stroke and SCI patients. Providing movements in four
DOF, ARMin can support spatial arm movements. A
patient-cooperative control strategy has been presented and
evaluated. It supports the patient only when necessary. In
combination with an audiovisual display ARMin can be
used to play ball games or to train ADL-related tasks.
These methods have the chance to provoke the patients to
actively contribute to the movement, increase the motivation
of the patient, enhance the intensity of the training and,
thus, improve the therapeutic outcome of the therapy
compared to conventional training methods. Future technical
work will focus on the evaluation of the new shoulder
actuation method and the implementation and evaluation of
further ADL training tasks. Future clinical work will focus
on clinical studies measuring the rehabilitation benefit for
the patient. It needs to be demonstrated that the therapeutic
outcome of arm therapy with the ARMin robot is higher
than the arm therapy delivered by robots with simpler
mechanics.