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In this paper we present FootTile, a foot sensor for reaction force and center of pressure sensing in challenging terrain. We compare our sensor design to standard biomechanical devices, force plates and pressure plates. We show that…
Dynamic locomotion in legged robots is close to industrial collaboration, but a lack of standardized testing obstructs commercialization. The issues are not merely political, theoretical, or algorithmic but also physical, indicating limited…
Optimization of energy cost determines average values of spatio-temporal gait parameters such as step duration, step length or step speed. However, during walking, humans need to adapt these parameters at every step to respond to exogenous…
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…
Humans possess a remarkable ability to react to unpredictable perturbations through immediate mechanical responses, which harness the visco-elastic properties of muscles to maintain balance. Inspired by this behaviour, we propose a novel…
The purpose of this research is to design, fabricate and test a tendon driven a continuum soft robot with three modular segments, each of which has a tunable stiffness enabled by layer jamming technology. Compared with previous studies, the…
We present a new open-source torque-controlled legged robot system, with a low-cost and low-complexity actuator module at its core. It consists of a high-torque brushless DC motor and a low-gear-ratio transmission suitable for impedance and…
Animals locomote robustly and agile, albeit significant sensorimotor delays of their nervous system. The sensorimotor control of legged robots is implemented with much higher frequencies-often in the kilohertz range-and sensor and actuator…
The vertical ground reaction force (vGRF) and its characteristic weight acceptance and push-off peaks measured during walking are important for gait and biomechanical analysis. Current wearable vGRF estimation methods suffer from drifting…
A sensor-fused wearable assistance prototype for upper-limb function (triceps brachii and extensor pollicis brevis) is presented. The device integrates surface electromyography (sEMG), an inertial measurement unit (IMU), and flex/force…
In this paper, we propose a locomotion training framework where a control policy and a state estimator are trained concurrently. The framework consists of a policy network which outputs the desired joint positions and a state estimation…
Adapting upper-limb impedance (i.e., stiffness, damping, inertia) is essential for humans interacting with dynamic environments for executing grasping or manipulation tasks. On the other hand, control methods designed for state-of-the-art…
Impressive animal locomotion capabilities are mediated by the co-evolution of the skeletal morphology and muscular properties. Legged robot performance would also likely benefit from the co-optimization of actuators and leg morphology.…
Human gait analysis with wearable sensors has been widely used in various applications, such as daily life healthcare, rehabilitation, physical therapy, and clinical diagnostics and monitoring. In particular, ground reaction force (GRF)…
Walking is a key movement of interest in biomechanics, yet gold-standard data collection methods are time- and cost-expensive. This paper presents a real-time, multimodal, high sample rate lower-limb motion capture framework, based on…
Compared to agile legged animals, wheeled and tracked vehicles often suffer large performance loss on granular surfaces like sand and gravel. Understanding the mechanics of legged locomotion on granular media can aid the development of…
Limitations in actuation, sensing, and computation have forced small legged robots to rely on carefully tuned, mechanically mediated leg trajectories for effective locomotion. Recent advances in manufacturing, however, have enabled the…
A major challenge to understanding locomotion in complex 3-D terrain with large obstacles is to create tools for controlled, systematic lab experiments. Existing terrain arenas only allow observations at small spatiotemporal scales (~10…
Robot feet are crucial for maintaining dynamic stability and propelling the body during walking, especially on uneven terrains. Traditionally, robot feet were mostly designed as flat and stiff pieces of metal, which meets its limitations…
To function autonomously in the physical world, humanoid robots need high-fidelity sensing systems, especially for forces that cannot be easily modeled. Modeling forces in robot feet is particularly challenging due to static indeterminacy,…