TITLE:
Design and Experimental Validation of an AR-Enhanced Upper Limb Rehabilitation Robot with Adaptive Trajectory Control
AUTHORS:
Weiwei Wen, Hanyang Xu, Fanghui Qiu, Tianxiao Chen, Yu Wang
KEYWORDS:
Upper Limb Rehabilitation Robot, Hybrid Parallel-Serial Mechanism, Adaptive Trajectory Control, Multi-Modal Sensing, Augmented Reality, Force-Tactile Perception
JOURNAL NAME:
World Journal of Engineering and Technology,
Vol.14 No.3,
August
31,
2026
ABSTRACT: Upper limb motor dysfunction caused by stroke, traumatic brain injury, and other neurological disorders has become a major global public health challenge, imposing heavy burdens on both healthcare systems and patient families. Conventional manual rehabilitation therapy is limited by insufficient therapist resources, inconsistent treatment quality, and a lack of quantitative evaluation, while most existing rehabilitation robots suffer from low terminal accuracy, poor adaptability to individual patient status, and low long-term training compliance. This paper presents a hybrid parallel-serial upper limb rehabilitation robot integrating multi-modal force-tactile perception, intelligent adaptive trajectory control, and immersive augmented reality (AR) interaction. First, a multi-body dynamic model of the hybrid mechanism is established based on the Lagrangian method, and a domestically manufactured hardware platform is developed with 100% localization rate of core components, achieving 0.1 mm terminal repeat positioning accuracy. Second, a multi-modal sensing fusion framework combining surface electromyography (sEMG), 3D force signals, and kinematic data is constructed; an optimized BiLSTM-Attention model with reinforcement learning is proposed to predict patient motion intention 300 ms in advance, and dynamically adjust auxiliary torque and motion trajectory with a control response delay ≤ 30 ms. Third, a lightweight asynchronous AR training system is developed to realize haptic-visual synchronous feedback, with interaction latency controlled within 50 ms. Bench tests and preliminary clinical validation show that the proposed robot outperforms industry average levels in core performance indicators, increases patients’ active motion induction rate by 30%, and shortens the Brunnstrom stage progression cycle by approximately 40% compared with traditional manual training. This system provides a precise, intelligent, and patient-friendly solution for upper limb motor rehabilitation, with broad clinical application prospects.