Human-Robot Interaction with Sliding Mode Control for Rehabilitation

The paper presents a Human-Robot Interaction approach together with a sliding mode position controller for robot-assisted arm rehabilitation. The controller is designed such that the chattering effect is low, while the tracking errors are kept in an acceptable range for rehabilitation applications. The Human-Robot Interaction logic is implemented outside the position control loop, and takes into account the human's effort and intention of movement. The human's contribution to the movement can be tuned iteratively, and the robot guides the movement by making it harder to move in a wrong direction, and easier in the direction towards the rehabilitation trajectory. Thus, our approach increases the percentage of time spent on practicing correct rehabilitation movements. Finally, experimental results illustrate its effectiveness.