Clinical training with mouth opening and closing training robotWY-3

摘要

Describes the development of a mouth-opening and -closing trainingrobot WY-3 (Waseda Yamanashi-3) that has been designed and developed bycombining oral-maxillofacial surgery and robotics. Mouth-openingtraining is useful for the rehabilitation of patients who have problemsopening and closing their mouths. Conventional mouth-opening apparatus(such as wooden screws, bite blocks and clothespins type apparatus) onlyincrease mouth-opening distance and do not have actuators, sensors,and/or control systems. Moreover, during therapy the quantitative forcedata is unknown in spite of its importance for the standardization ofmouth-opening and -closing training. The mouth-opening and -closingtraining robot WY-3 consists of mechanical, actuation, sensor, andcontrol systems. As a result of therapy using WY-3, the mouth-openingdistance increased from 36 to 41 mm