Related papers: Proximal powered knee placement: a case study

A spring in parallel with an effort source (e.g., electric motor or human muscle) can reduce its energy consumption and effort (i.e., torque or force) depending on the spring stiffness, spring preload, and actuation task. However, selecting…

Augmenting the body with artificial limbs controlled concurrently to the natural limbs has long appeared in science fiction, but recent technological and neuroscientific advances have begun to make this vision possible. By allowing…

Tendon-driven hand orthoses have advantages over exoskeletons with respect to wearability and safety because of their low-profile design and ability to fit a range of patients without requiring custom joint alignment. However, no existing…

The sit-to-stand movement is a key feature for wide adoption of powered lower limb orthoses for patients with complete paraplegia. In this paper we study the control of the ascending phase of the sit-to-stand movement for a minimally…

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…

In this paper, we present a novel control framework to achieve robust push recovery on bipedal robots while locomoting. The key contribution is the unification of hybrid system models of locomotion with a reduced-order model predictive…

Parallel-elastic joints can improve the efficiency and strength of robots by assisting the actuators with additional torques. For these benefits to be realized, a spring needs to be carefully designed. However, designing robots is an…

Many people living with neurological disorders, such as cerebral palsy, stroke, muscular dystrophy or dystonia experience upper limb impairments (muscle spasticity, loss of selective motor control, muscle weakness or tremors) and have…

Age-related mobility decline is frequently accompanied by a redistribution of joint kinetics, where older adults compensate for reduced ankle function by increasing demand on the hip. Paradoxically, this compensatory shift typically…

Many people suffer from the loss of a limb. Learning to get by without an arm or hand can be very challenging, and existing prostheses do not yet fulfil the needs of individuals with amputations. One promising solution is to provide greater…

Dynamic locomotion in rough terrain requires accurate foot placement, collision avoidance, and planning of the underactuated dynamics of the system. Reliably optimizing for such motions and interactions in the presence of imperfect and…

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…

In legged locomotion, the relationship between different gait behaviors and energy consumption must consider the full-body dynamics and the robot control as a whole, which cannot be captured by simple models. This work studies the robot…

Balance loss is a significant challenge in lower-limb exoskeleton applications, as it can lead to potential falls, thereby impacting user safety and confidence. We introduce a control framework for omnidirectional recovery step planning by…

This paper proposes a data-driven method for powered prosthesis control that achieves stable walking without the need for additional sensors on the human. The key idea is to extract the nominal gait and the human interaction information…

Developing feasible body trajectories for legged systems on arbitrary terrains is a challenging task. In this paper, we present a paradigm that allows to design feasible Center of Mass (CoM) and body trajectories in an efficient manner. In…

The range of rotation (RoR) in a knee exoskeleton is a critical factor in rehabilitation, as it directly influences joint mobility, muscle activation, and recovery outcomes. A well-designed RoR ensures that patients achieve near-natural…

Due to hemiparesis, stroke survivors frequently develop a dysfunctional gait that is often characterized by an overall decrease in walking speed and a unilateral decrease in step length. With millions currently affected by this…

This paper describes a new parallel kinematic architecture for machining applications: the orthoglide. This machine features three fixed parallel linear joints which are mounted orthogonally and a mobile platform which moves in the…

Human beings can utilize multiple balance strategies, e.g. step location adjustment and angular momentum adaptation, to maintain balance when walking under dynamic disturbances. In this work, we propose a novel Nonlinear Model Predictive…