Affiliations: [a] Institute of Automation, University of Bremen, Otto Hahn Allee NW1, D-28359 Bremen, Germany. Tel.: +49 421 218 3217; Fax.: +49 421 218 4596; E-mail: ivlev@iat.uni-bremen.de | [b] Development Engineer for Control Technique and Automation, Team: LTMR, Rheinmetall-Defence-Electronics, Brüggeweg 54, 28309 Bremen, Germany. Tel.: +49 421 457 3909; Fax.: +49 421 457 1759; E-mail: martens.c@rheinmetall-de.com | [x] Institute for Fundamental and Clinical Movement Science, Faculty of Movement Sciences, Vrije Universiteit, Amsterdam, The Netherlands | [y] Rehabilitation Center “Amsterdam”, Amsterdam, The Netherlands | [z] Delft University of Technology, Delft, The Netherlands
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Corresponding author.
Abstract: The rehabilitation robotic systems FRIEND-I/-II belong to the category “intelligent’ wheelchair mounted manipulators. The systems are being developed at the Institute of Automation (IAT), University of Bremen, since 1997. They are used as a personal assistant to support disabled persons with upper-limb impairments in daily life situations as well as in the working environment. This paper gives an user oriented overview of the facilities of the FRIEND-I system as well as a description of the innovations of the currently developed FRIEND-II system. It will be shown that the concept of semi-autonomy enables the development of rehabilitation robotic systems that process tasks robustly on a relatively high level of abstraction. Additionally, the paper underlines the necessity to improve the manipulative flexibility of rehabilitation robots and describes the new control concept – Kinematic Configuration Control – of FRIEND-II's dexterous robot arm having fluidic 5-finger hand and humanlike 7-joints kinematics.
