Haptic Based Resistance Training Machine

Resistance training has been used for the purpose of improving muscular strength, power and endurance, and rehabilitation. It is important to consider the individual biomechanical characteristics in training and rehabilitation. Conventional commercial resistance training machines for resistance training have limitations on adapting the workout person’s biomechanical characteristics because they usually provide one degree-of freedom motion trajectory and resistance load profile, which cannot be adjustable during one repetition. In the majority of cases, the exercise trajectories of a human cannot be represented with one degree-of-freedom due to their complexity. So, the workout person has to fit their exercise motion to the machine’s guided motion trajectory and resistance profile. In contrast to the conventional exercise machines, haptic-based resistance training machine which is introduced in this proceeding can generate arbitrary two dimensional motion trajectory and resistance profile. Furthermore, workout person’s biomechanical characteristics (i.e. position-velocity-force relationship) can be easily obtained using F/T sensor. Therefore the haptic-based resistance training machine can provides more effective resistance trainings considering workout person’s biomechanical characteristics. The effectiveness of haptic based resistance training machine was verified by comparing with dumbbell rotator cuff muscle training method; internal/external rotations and shoulder abduction that are widely used for training rotator cuff muscles.