Development an arm robot to simulate the lead-pipe rigidity for medical education

Neurologic examination takes an important role in the physical examination. It requires abundant knowledge with prominent skills. Normally, the medical staffs, especially novices are trained to master the skills and accumulate experiences with several methods such as watching video, training with the simulated patient (SP), and so on. However, the drawbacks of the above methods, such as lack of multi-symptoms, lack of active interactions, etc, limit the training effects. To make up them, several kinds of medical training simulators have been developed to improve training effectiveness. However, most of these simulators just focus on mimicking the symptoms. The could not simulate the pathology of diseases. In this paper, we will propose an elbow robot named WKE-2(Waseda Kyotokagaku Elbow Robot No.2) to simulate the symptoms of motor nerve system for neurologic examination training on elbow force examination. In this paper, the mechanism of the elbow robot and physiological neurological model is described. As a sample, the performance of lead-pipe symptoms is introduced. Taking advantage of the robot, the trainee can get a full training on the examination skills and knowledge as well as the understanding of disease effection. Finally, several experiments are performed to verify the proposed robot. The results lead to the consideration that the approach is worth following in further research. 1