Related papers: Power to the springs: Passive elements are suffici…
Legged locomotion in humans is governed by natural dynamics of the human body and neural control. One mechanism that is assumed to contribute to the high efficiency of human walking is the impulsive ankle push-off, which potentially powers…
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…
Human walking efficiency relies on the elastic recoil of the Achilles tendon, facilitated by a "catapult mechanism" that stores energy during stance and releases it during push-off. The catapult release mechanism could include the passive…
Powered ankle-foot prostheses can often reduce the energy cost of walking by assisting with push-off. However, focus on providing mechanical work may lead to ignoring or exacerbating common issues with chronic pain, irritation, pressure…
This work presents a description of the EXOSMOOTH project, oriented to the benchmarking of lower limb exoskeletons performance. In the field of assisted walking by powered lower limb exoskeletons, the EXOSMOOTH project proposes an…
Assistive ankle-foot orthoses (AAFOs) are powerful solutions to assist or rehabilitate gait on humans. Existing AAFO technologies include passive, quasi-passive, and active principles to provide assistance to the users, and their mechanical…
Despite the fact that only a small portion of muscles are affected in motion disease and disorders, medical therapies do not distinguish between healthy and unhealthy muscles. In this paper, a method is devised in order to calculate the…
The present study focused on the effects of trunk extensor muscles fatigue on postural control during quiet standing under different somatosensory conditions from the foot and the ankle. With this aim, 20 young healthy adults were asked to…
We present a personal mobility device for lower-body impaired users through a light-weighted exoskeleton on wheels. On its core, a novel passive exoskeleton provides postural transition leveraging natural body postures with support to the…
We are motivated by a study that seeks to better understand the dynamic relationship between muscle activation and paw position during locomotion. For each gait cycle in this experiment, activation in the biceps and triceps is measured…
Legged robots promise higher versatility and the ability to traverse much more difficult terrains than their wheeled counterparts. Even though the use of legged robots have increased drastically in the last few years, they are still not…
Passive dynamic walkers are widely adopted as a mathematical model to represent biped walking. The stable locomotion of these models is limited to tilted surfaces, requiring gravitational energy. Various techniques, such as actuation…
Exoskeletons have been shown to effectively assist humans during steady locomotion. However, their effects on non-steady locomotion, characterized by nonlinear phase progression within a gait cycle, remain insufficiently explored,…
Robust and energy-efficient bipedal locomotion in robotics is still a challenging topic. In order to address issues in this field, we can take inspiration from nature, by studying human locomotion. The Spring-Loaded Inverted Pendulum (SLIP)…
In this paper, we investigate whether applying ankle torques during mid-stance can be a more effective way to reduce energetic cost of locomotion than actuating leg length alone. Ankles are useful in human gaits for many reasons including…
Powered ankle prostheses effectively assist people with lower limb amputation to perform daily activities. High performance prostheses with adjustable compliance and capability to predict and implement amputee's intent are crucial for them…
Elastic strain energy is stored and released from long, distal tendons such as the Achilles during locomotion, reducing locomotor energy cost by minimising muscle shortening distance and speed, and thus activation. However, numerous…
The Angular-Momentum Linear Inverted Pendulum (ALIP) model is a promising motion planner for bipedal robots. However, it relies on two assumptions: (1) the robot has point-contact feet or passive ankles, and (2) the angular momentum around…
While humans are highly capable of recovering from external disturbances and uncertainties that result in large tracking errors, humanoid robots have yet to reliably mimic this level of robustness. Essential to this is the ability to…
This paper presents an online walking synthesis methodology to enable dynamic and stable walking on constrained footholds for underactuated bipedal robots. Our approach modulates the change of angular momentum about the foot-ground contact…