Related papers: A Sagittal Planar Ankle-Foot Prosthesis with Power…
Sensory feedback is critical to the performance of neural prostheses that restore movement control after neurological injury. Recent advances in direct neural control of paralyzed arms present new requirements for miniaturized, low-power…
Over the years, the number of exoskeleton devices utilized for upper-limb rehabilitation has increased dramatically, each with its own set of pros and cons. Most exoskeletons are not portable, limiting their utility to daily use for house…
This manuscript presents control of a high-DOF fully actuated lower-limb exoskeleton for paraplegic individuals. The key novelty is the ability for the user to walk without the use of crutches or other external means of stabilization. We…
We propose an online motion planner for legged robot locomotion with the primary objective of achieving energy efficiency. The conceptual idea is to leverage a placement set of footstep positions based on the robot's body position to…
Current prosthesis control methods are primarily model-independent - lacking formal guarantees of stability, relying largely on heuristic tuning parameters for good performance, and neglecting use of the natural dynamics of the system.…
Ankle proprioceptive deficits are common after stroke and occur independently of ankle motor impairments. Despite this independence, some studies have found that ankle proprioceptive deficits predict gait function, consistent with the…
Walking is a common bipedal and quadrupedal gait and is often associated with terrestrial and aquatic organisms. Inspired by recent evidence of the neural underpinnings of primitive aquatic walking in the little skate Leucoraja erinacea, we…
Bipedal walking is one of the most important hallmarks of human that robots have been trying to mimic for many decades. Although previous control methodologies have achieved robot walking on some terrains, there is a need for a framework…
Although the average life expectancy in Japan has been increasing in recent years, the problem of the large gap between healthy life expectancy and average life expectancy is still unresolved. Among the factors that lead to the need for…
This paper presents a Non-Linear Model Predictive Controller for humanoid robot locomotion with online step adjustment capabilities. The proposed controller considers the Centroidal Dynamics of the system to compute the desired contact…
Untethered soft robots that locomote using electrothermally-responsive materials like shape memory alloy (SMA) face challenging design constraints for sensing actuator states. At the same time, modeling of actuator behaviors faces steep…
Gait rehabilitation interventions targeting paretic propulsion can improve walking speed and function in individuals post-stroke. Previous work has demonstrated that real-time biofeedback targeting anterior ground reaction forces (AGRFs)…
Tactile sensing on human feet is crucial for motion control, however, has not been explored in robotic counterparts. This work is dedicated to endowing tactile sensing to legged robot's feet and showing that a single-legged robot can be…
Soft robotics hold promise in the development of safe yet powered assistive wearable devices for infants. Key to this is the development of closed-loop controllers that can help regulate pneumatic pressure in the device's actuators in an…
Background: Upper-limb weakness and tremor (4--12 Hz) limit activities of daily living (ADL) and reduce adherence to home rehabilitation. Objective: To assess technical feasibility and clinician-relevant signals of a sensor-fused wearable…
We present a method for humanoid robot walking on partial footholds such as small stepping stones and rocks with sharp surfaces. Our algorithm does not rely on prior knowledge of the foothold, but information about an expected foothold can…
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…
Objective: Overhead tasks are a primary inducement to work-related musculoskeletal disorders. Aiming to reduce shoulder physical loads, passive shoulder exoskeletons are increasingly prevalent in the industry due to their lightweight,…
Estimating human pose, classifying actions, and predicting movement progress are essential for human-robot interaction. While vision-based methods suffer from occlusion and privacy concerns in realistic environments, tactile sensing avoids…
Generating stable walking gaits that yield natural locomotion when executed on robotic-assistive devices is a challenging task that often requires hand-tuning by domain experts. This paper presents an alternative methodology, where we…