Related papers: Optimization reduces knee-joint forces during walk…
Background The development of a simulation model of full body reaching tasks that can predict endeffector trajectories and joint excursions consistent with experimental data is a non-trivial task. Because of the kinematic redundancy…
Construction workers exert intense physical effort and experience serious safety and health risks in hazardous working environments. Quiet stance and kneeling are among the most common postures performed by construction workers during their…
Powered lower limb exoskeletons are a viable solution for people with a spinal cord injury to regain mobility for their daily activities. However, the commonly employed rigid actuation and pre-programmed trajectories increase the risk of…
Spinal cord injuries frequently impair the ability to walk. Powered lower limb exoskeletons offer a promising solution to restore walking ability. However, they are currently restricted to even ground. We hypothesized that compliant…
Traditional force-controlled bipedal walking utilizes highly bent knees, resulting in high torques as well as inefficient, and unnatural motions. Even with advanced planning of center of mass height trajectories, significant amounts of…
Lower limb amputation affects millions worldwide, leading to impaired mobility, reduced walking speed, and limited participation in daily and social activities. Powered prosthetic knees can partially restore mobility by actively assisting…
Muscle force sharing is typically resolved by minimizing a specific objective function to approximate neural control strategies. An inverse optimal control approach was applied to identify the "best" objective function, among a positive…
Ankle push-off largely contributes to limb energy generation in human walking, leading to smoother and more efficient locomotion. Providing this net positive work to an amputee requires an active prosthesis, but has the potential to enable…
Lower-limb prosthesis wearers are more prone to falling than non-amputees. Powered prostheses can reduce this instability of passive prostheses. While shown to be more stable in practice, powered prostheses generally use model-independent…
Joint injuries, and their long-term consequences, present a substantial global health burden. Wearable prophylactic braces are an attractive potential solution to reduce the incidence of joint injuries by limiting joint movements that are…
Prosthesis users can regain partial limb functionality, however, full natural limb mobility is rarely restored, often resulting in compensatory movements that lead to discomfort, inefficiency, and long-term physical strain. To address this…
Human locomotion emerges from high-dimensional neuromuscular control, making predictive musculoskeletal simulation challenging. We present a physiology-informed reinforcement-learning framework that constrains control using muscle…
This paper presents design and control innovations of wearable robots that tackle two barriers to widespread adoption of powered exoskeletons, namely restriction of human movement and versatile control of wearable co-robot systems. First,…
Designing generalizable control policies for lower-limb exoskeletons remains fundamentally constrained by exhaustive data collection or iterative optimization procedures, which limit accessibility to clinical populations. To address this…
Environment awareness is crucial for enhancing walking safety and stability of amputee wearing powered prosthesis when crossing uneven terrains such as stairs and obstacles. However, existing environmental perception systems for prosthesis…
Control strategies for active prostheses or orthoses use sensor inputs to recognize the user's locomotive intention and generate corresponding control commands for producing the desired locomotion. In this paper, we propose a learning-based…
Musculoskeletal models are pivotal in the domains of rehabilitation and resistance training to analyze muscle conditions. However, individual variability in musculoskeletal parameters and the immeasurability of some internal biomechanical…
Powered prostheses are capable of providing net positive work to amputees and have advanced in the past two decades. However, reducing amputee metabolic cost of walking remains an open problem. The Law of Intersegmental Coordination (ISC)…
A new approach for trajectory optimization of musculoskeletal dynamic models is introduced. The model combines rigid body and muscle dynamics described with a Hill-type model driven by neural control inputs. The objective is to find input…
Squatting is one of the most demanding lower-limb movements, requiring substantial muscular effort and coordination. Reducing the physical demands of this task through intelligent and personalized assistance has significant implications,…