A Pulmonary Rehabilitation Training Robot for Chronic Obstructive Pulmonary Disease Patient

Abstract

As a kind of progressive obstructive pulmonary disease, chronic obstructive pulmonary disease (COPD) is seriously harmful to people’s health, especially for the elder. People with COPD usually have symptoms of respiratory discomfort, leg tiredness, and even dyspnea. Traditionally, pulmonary rehabilitation is considered as an important management and treatment for COPD and is widely applied in clinics. The pulmonary rehabilitation training robot proposed in this paper is designed based on the pulmonary rehabilitation principle. Additionally, this respiratory robot can effectively assist COPD patients with respiratory rehabilitation training exercise, relief the burden of respiratory muscle and help them adjust the respiratory strategy. In the experimental study, we used the wireless EMG measurement technique to study the activity of respiratory muscle during training exercise and found that the activity of the diaphragm muscle decreases under training state comparing with that the nonassisted state. In addition, with the increase of the motor’s speed, the diaphragm muscle becomes less active. We also studied the motion changes of the subject’s chest and diaphragm muscle during training through motion capture system.