Investigation of 2DOF PID Controller for Physio-Therapeutic Application for Elbow Rehabilitation

The aim of this work is to evaluate the output of a two-degree of freedom (DOF) proportional integral derivative (PID) controller for controlling elbow flexion and extension on an upper limb rehabilitation robot of an existing model. Since the usage of upper limb rehabilitation is increasing dramatically because of human impairment, 2DOF has been proposed in this work as a suitable controller. The 2DOF PID controller offers set-point-weight features and, hence, is fast in removing disturbance from the system and ensuring system stability. Importantly, as the system parameters are unknown in this work, the black-box model approach has been taken into consideration, using the MATLAB System identification toolbox to estimate a model. The best-fitted estimated model is then coupled with the proposed controller in the MATLAB/Simulink environment that, upon successful simulation works, leads, finally, to the hardware implementation. Three different amplitudes of sinusoidal current signals, such as 0.3 amps, 0.2 amps, and 0.1 amps, are applied for hardware measurements. Considering patients’ physical conditions. In this work, the 2DOF controller offers a fast transient response, settling time, negligible tracking error and 0% overshoot and undershoot.