Related papers: Optimal Kinematic Synthesis and Prototype Developm…
Falls are the leading cause of injury related hospitalization and mortality among older adults. Consequently, mitigating age-related declines in gait stability and reducing fall risk during walking is a critical goal for assistive devices.…
Reduced-order models (ROM) are popular in online motion planning due to their simplicity. A good ROM for control captures critical task-relevant aspects of the full dynamics while remaining low dimensional. However, planning within the…
Humans rely on ankle torque to maintain standing balance, particularly in the presence of small to moderate perturbations. Reductions in maximum torque (MT) production and maximum rate of torque development (MRTD) occur at the ankle with…
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…
A class of planar bipedal robots with unique mechanical properties has been proposed, where all links are balanced around the hip joint, preventing natural swinging motion due to gravity. A common property of their equations of motion is…
Metabolic energy consumption of a powered lower-limb exoskeleton user mainly comes from the upper body effort since the lower body is considered to be passive. However, the upper body effort of the users is largely ignored in the literature…
Knee osteoarthritis (KOA) is a prevalent musculoskeletal disorder, often diagnosed using X-rays due to its cost-effectiveness. While Magnetic Resonance Imaging (MRI) provides superior soft tissue visualization and serves as a valuable…
This work addresses the problem of kinematic trajectory planning for mobile manipulators with non-holonomic constraints, and holonomic operational-space tracking constraints. We obtain whole-body trajectories and time-varying kinematic…
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…
Running is a fundamental form of human locomotion and a key task for evaluating neuromuscular control and lower-limb coordination. In recent years, muscle synergy analysis based on surface electromyography (sEMG) has become an important…
Design requirements for moving parts in mechanical assemblies are typically specified in terms of interactions with other parts. Some are purely kinematic (e.g., pairwise collision avoidance) while others depend on physics and material…
This work focuses on the optimization of the training trajectory orientation using a robot as an advanced exercise machine (AEM) and muscle activations as biofeedback. Muscle recruitment patterns depend on trajectory parameters of the AEMs…
Using lower-limbs exoskeletons provides potential advantages in terms of productivity and safety associated with reduced stress. However, complex issues in human-robot interaction are still open, such as the physiological effects of…
This paper presents a personalized gait optimization framework for lower-body exoskeletons. Rather than optimizing numerical objectives such as the mechanical cost of transport, our approach directly learns from user preferences, e.g., for…
Background. Osteoarthritis affects about 528 million people worldwide, causing pain and stiffness in the joints. Arthroplasty is commonly performed to treat joint osteoarthritis, reducing pain and improving mobility. Nevertheless, a…
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…
This paper studies the design, control, and learning of a novel robotic limb that produces overconstrained locomotion by employing the Bennett linkage for motion generation, capable of parametric reconfiguration between a reptile- and…
Musculoskeletal robots offer intrinsic compliance and flexibility, providing a promising paradigm for versatile locomotion. However, existing research typically relies on models with fixed muscle physiological parameters. This static…
Human locomotion involves continuously variable activities including walking, running, and stair climbing over a range of speeds and inclinations as well as sit-stand, walk-run, and walk-stairs transitions. Understanding the kinematics and…
Accurate alignment of multi-degree-of-freedom rehabilitation robots is essential for safe and effective patient training. This paper proposes a two-stage calibration framework for a self-designed three-degree-of-freedom (3-DOF) ankle…