A therapeutic arm exercise system using resistance to movement of a wheel supported arm trolley

摘要

An arm exercise/rehabilitation system using resistance to motion is disclosed. The system uses an arm trolley (300) having one or more support wheels and which is arranged to support a user's arm (390) for movement over a surface (394) via the wheel(s). An actuator or actuators associated with one or more of the wheel(s) of the arm trolley (300) apply a level of braking to resist movement of the wheel(s). This applies resistance to the movement of the arm (390) of a patient to assist in their rehabilitation. A motion tracking system, using a camera for example, is arranged to sense and track movement of the trolley (300) over the surface (394) and generate representative position data. A computer system (395) then receives the representative position data to enable a user to interact with a program running on the computer (395). The computer (395) then controls the actuator(s), to apply a level of braking to resist movement of the wheel(s) based on the user's interaction with the program.