A Novel Single-Loop Mechanism for Neck Rehabilitation

Neck pain due to traumas, amyotrophic lateral sclerosis (ALS), head neck cancer (HNC) are only some of the possible issues requiring a suitable therapy for alleviating or, even, healing the neck dysfunctions they cause. Static and dynamic neck braces are commonly employed in therapies for neck recovery and in the measurements necessary to quantify neck impairment or to set up a suitable therapy. Serial and parallel mechanisms, among others, have been proposed as possible neck braces. Here, a novel single-loop spherical mechanism is proposed as possible neck brace. Its kinematics and mobility analyses are presented with reference to the specific application in a neck brace. Then, its dimensional synthesis with neck brace’s kinematic requirements is addressed till to compute the geometric constants that guarantee an orientation workspace similar to the one of the human neck. The presented analyses and syntheses show that the new proposal is effective and can solve some concerns of the already proposed mechanisms for neck braces.