Currently, a telerehabilitation system includes a therapist and a patient where the therapist interacts with the patient, typically via a verbal and visual communication, for assessment and supervision of rehabilitation interventions. This mechanism often fails to provide physical assistance, which is a modus operandi during physical therapy or occupational therapy. Incorporating an actuation modality such as functional electrical stimulation (FES) or a robot at the patient’s end that can be controlled by a therapist remotely to provide therapy or to assess and measure rehabilitation outcomes can significantly transform current telerehabilitation technology. In this paper, a position-synchronization controller is derived for FES-based telerehabilitation to provide physical assistance that can be controlled remotely. The newly derived controller synchronizes an FES-driven human limb with a remote physical therapist’s robotic manipulator despite constant bilateral communication delays. The control design overcomes a major stability analysis challenge: the unknown and unstructured nonlinearities in the FES-driven musculoskeletal dynamics. To address this challenge, the nonlinear muscle model was estimated through two neural network functions that approximated unstructured nonlinearities and an adaptive control law for structured nonlinearities with online update laws. A Lyapunov-based stability analysis was used to prove the globally uniformly ultimately bounded tracking performance. The performance of the state synchronization controller was validated through experiments on an able-bodied subject. Specifically, we demonstrated bilateral control of FES-elicited leg extension and a human-operated robotic manipulator. The controller was shown to effectively synchronize the system despite unknown and different delays in the forward and backward channels.

中文翻译：

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功能性电刺激和基于机器人的远程康复的双边控制。

当前，远程康复系统包括治疗师和患者，其中治疗师通常通过口头和视觉交流与患者互动，以评估和监督康复干预措施。这种机制通常无法提供身体上的帮助，这是物理治疗或职业治疗期间的一种作案手法。在患者端结合诸如功能性电刺激（FES）或机器人的驱动方式，该方式可以由治疗师远程控制以提供治疗或评估和测量康复结果，从而可以显着改变当前的远程康复技术。在本文中，为基于FES的远程康复推导了位置同步控制器，以提供可远程控制的物理帮助。尽管持续不断的双边通信延迟，新派生的控制器仍将FES驱动的人肢与远程物理治疗师的机器人操纵器同步。控制设计克服了主要的稳定性分析难题：FES驱动的肌肉骨骼动力学中未知的和非结构化的非线性。为了应对这一挑战，通过两个神经网络函数（近似于非结构化非线性）和具有在线更新定律的结构化非线性自适应控制律，来估算非线性肌肉模型。基于Lyapunov的稳定性分析用于证明全局统一的最终有界跟踪性能。状态同步控制器的性能已通过对健全受试者的实验验证。具体来说，我们展示了FES引起的双腿伸直和人为操纵的机械手的双边控制。尽管在前向和后向通道中存在未知和不同的延迟，但该控制器被证明可以有效地同步系统。