Journal of Bionic Engineering (2022) 19:390–402  https://doi.org/10.1007/s42235-022-00162-8

Cable-Driven Parallel Robot Workspace Identifcation and Optimal Design Based on the Upper Limb Functional Rehabilitation Ferdaws 

Ennaiem1,2  · Abdelbadi? Chaker2  · Juan Sandoval1  · Sami Bennour2  · Abdelfattah Mlika2  · Lotf Romdhane2,3 · Sa?d Zeghloul1  · Med Amine Laribi1

1 Department of GMSC, Pprime Institute CNRS, ENSMA, University of Poitiers, UPR 3346, Poitiers, France
2 Mechanical Laboratory of Sousse (LMS), National Engineering School of Sousse, University of Sousse, 4000 Sousse, Tunisia
3 American University of Sharjah, PO Box 26666, Sharjah, United Arab Emirates

Abstract  An assessment of the human motion repeatability for three selected Activities of Daily Living (ADL) is performed in this paper. These exercises were prescribed by an occupational therapist for the upper limb rehabilitation. The movement patterns of fve participants, recorded using a Qualisys motion capture system, are compared based on the Analysis of Variance (ANOVA) method. This survey is motivated by the need to fnd the appropriate task workspace of a 6-degrees of freedom cable-driven parallel robot for upper limb rehabilitation, which is able to reproduce the three selected exercises. This comparison is performed to justify, whether or not, there is enough similarity between the participants’ gestures, and so a single reference trajectory can be adopted as the robot-prescribed workspace. Using the results of the comparative study, an optimization process of the sought robot design is carried out, where the structure size and the cable tensions simultaneously minimized. 

Keywords  Human motion repeatability · Activities of Daily Living (ADL) · Analysis of Variance (ANOVA) · Task workspace · Cable-driven parallel robot · Upper limb rehabilitation · Optimization

Markers locations and local frames attached to each segment