Design of an Elbow Magnetorheological Rehabilitation Orthosis for Patients with Spasticity

Stroke survivors with spasticity, an involuntary increase in muscle tone, often struggle to access specialized equipment and medical support for their rehabilitation. Rehabilitation exercises are daily routines requiring patients to perform repetitive movements of their spastic joints. To reduce patient mobilization within hospitals, offering orthoses suitable for use in home settings, outside of clinical environments, is required to limit the involvement of healthcare personnel in the treatment of hemiparesis for patients. Such orthoses must be designed to be portable and be able to tolerate the erratic motions of spasms without breaking or injuring patients. This paper presents the use of magnetorheological actuators to design an elbow orthosis, improving weight, reactivity, and transparence necessary for effective rehabilitation of spastic patients. A prototype is designed, built, and characterized experimentally. Results suggest that the technology is lightweight and highly transparent to erratic motion, and thus well-suited for spastic patients.