The most concentrated application of lower-limb rehabilitation exoskeleton (LLE) robot is that it can help paraplegics "re-walk". However, "walking" in daily life is more than just walking on flat ground with fixed gait. This paper focuses on variable gaits generation for LLE robot to adapt complex walking environment. Different from traditional gaits generator for biped robot, the generated gaits for LLEs should be comfortable to patients. Inspired by the pose graph optimization algorithm in SLAM, we propose a graph-based gait generation algorithm called gait graph optimization (GGO) to generate variable, functional and comfortable gaits from one base gait collected from healthy individuals to adapt the walking environment. Variants of walking problem, e.g., stride adjustment, obstacle avoidance, and stair ascent and descent, help verify the proposed approach in simulation and experimentation. We open source our implementation.
Most current hand exoskeletons have been designed specifically for rehabilitation, assistive or haptic applications to simplify the design requirements. Clinical studies on post-stroke rehabilitation have shown that adapting assistive or haptic applications into physical therapy sessions significantly improves the motor learning and treatment process. The recent technology can lead to the creation of generic hand exoskeletons that are application-agnostic. In this paper, our motivation is to create guidelines and best practices for generic exoskeletons by reviewing the literature of current de…
Texas A&M University（德州农工大学）；Texas A&M University at Qatar（德州农工大学卡塔尔分校）
Robotic systems are increasingly used in rehabilitation to provide high intensity training for patients with motor impairment. The results of controlled trials involving human subjects confirm the effectiveness of robot-enhanced methods and prove them to be marginally superior over standard manual therapy in some cases. Although very promising, this line of research is still in its infancy and further studies are required to fully understand the potential benefits of using robotic devices such as exoskeletons. Exoskeletons have been widely studied due to their capability in providing more cont…
The kinematics recursive equation was built by using the modified D-H method after the structure of rehabilitation lower extremity exoskeleton was analyzed. The numerical algorithm of inverse kinematics was given too. Then the three-dimensional simulation model of the exoskeleton robot was built using MATLAB software, based on the model, 3D reappearance of a complete gait was achieved. Finally, the reliability of numerical algorithm of inverse kinematics was verified by the simulation result. All jobs above lay a foundation for developing a three-dimensional simulation platform of exoskeleton …
Texas A&M University（德州农工大学）；Texas A&M University at Qatar（德州农工大学卡塔尔分校）
CLEVERarm (Compact, Low-weight, Ergonomic, Virtual and Augmented Reality Enhanced Rehabilitation arm) is a novel exoskeleton with eight degrees of freedom supporting the motion of shoulder girdle, glenohumeral joint, elbow and wrist. Of the eight degrees of freedom of the exoskeleton, six are active and the two degrees of freedom supporting the motion of wrist are passive. This paper briefly outlines the design of CLEVERarm and its control architectures.
Centre for Advanced Robotics（高级机器人中心）；School of Engineering and Materials Science（工程与材料科学学院）；Queen Mary University of London（伦敦玛丽女王大学）
Common disabilities like stroke and spinal cord injuries may cause loss of motor function in hands. They can be treated with robot assisted rehabilitation techniques, like continuously opening and closing the hand with help of a robot, in a cheaper, and less time consuming manner than traditional methods. Hand exoskeletons are developed to assist rehabilitation, but their bulky nature brings with it certain challenges. As soft robots use elastomeric and fabric elements rather than heavy links, and operate with pneumatic, hydraulic or tendon based rather than traditional rotary or linear motors…
Icahn School of Medicine at Mount Sinai（西奈山伊坎医学院）；Grove School of Engineering（格罗夫工程学院）；City College of New York（纽约城市学院）；Moss Rehabilitation Research Institute（莫斯康复研究所）；University of Wisconsin-Madison（威斯康星大学麦迪逊分校）
Individuals with spinal cord injury (SCI) and stroke who is lack of manipulation capability have a particular need for robotic hand exoskeletons. Among assistive and rehabilitative medical exoskeletons, there exists a sharp trade-off between device power on the one hand and ergonomics and portability on other, devices that provide stronger grasping assistance do so at the cost of patient comfort. This paper proposes using fin-ray inspired, cable-driven finger orthoses to generate high fingertip forces without the painful compressive and shear stresses commonly associated with conventional cabl…
Characterizing what types of exoskeleton gaits are comfortable for users, and understanding the science of walking more generally, require recovering a user's utility landscape. Learning these landscapes is challenging, as walking trajectories are defined by numerous gait parameters, data collection from human trials is expensive, and user safety and comfort must be ensured. This work proposes the Region of Interest Active Learning (ROIAL) framework, which actively learns each user's underlying utility function over a region of interest that ensures safety and comfort. ROIAL learns from ordina…
Optimizing lower-body exoskeleton walking gaits for user comfort requires understanding users' preferences over a high-dimensional gait parameter space. However, existing preference-based learning methods have only explored low-dimensional domains due to computational limitations. To learn user preferences in high dimensions, this work presents LineCoSpar, a human-in-the-loop preference-based framework that enables optimization over many parameters by iteratively exploring one-dimensional subspaces. Additionally, this work identifies gait attributes that characterize broader preferences across…
Kinematic structure of an exoskeleton is the most fundamental block of its design and is determinant of many functional capabilities of it. Although numerous upper limb rehabilitation devices have been designed in the recent years, there is not a framework that can systematically guide the kinematic design procedure. Additionally, diversity of currently available devices and the many minute details incorporated to address certain design requirements hinders pinpointing the core kinematics of the available devices to compare them against each other. This makes the review of literature for ident…
California Institute of Technology（加州理工学院）；Tsinghua University（清华大学）
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 comfort. Building upon work in preference-based interactive learning, we present the CoSpar algorithm. CoSpar prompts the user to give pairwise preferences between trials and suggest improvements; as exoskeleton walking is a non-intuitive behavior, users can provide preferences more easily and reliably than numerical feedback. We show that CoSpar performs co…
Distribution of Responsibility During the Usage of AI-Based Exoskeletons for Upper Limb Rehabilitation
Laboratory Of Innovative Technologies, University of Picardie Jules Verne（皮卡迪儒勒凡尔纳大学创新技术实验室）；LIRMM, Université de Montpellier, CNRS（蒙彼利埃大学LIRMM实验室、法国国家科学研究中心）；CHRU de Brest, Hôpital Morvan（布雷斯特大学医院中心，莫尔旺医院）
ETH Zurich（苏黎世联邦理工学院）；Balgrist University Hospital（巴尔格里斯特大学医院）；University of Zurich（苏黎世大学）
Spinal cord injuries frequently impair the ability to walk. Powered lower limb exoskeletons offer a promising solution to restore walking ability. However, they are currently restricted to even ground. We hypothesized that compliant exoskeleton knees could decrease required effort to maneuver on uneven terrain, and increase gait velocity and stability. We describe a case study of a motor-complete spinal cord injury user (AIS A, Th12) walking with a powered exoskeleton on even and uneven ground over multiple sessions after extensive training. Measurements with compliant or rigid exoskeleton kne…
University Hospital of Freiburg（弗莱堡大学医院）；Scuola Superiore Sant’Anna（圣安娜高等研究院）
Lower limbs exoskeletons provide assistance during standing, squatting, and walking. Gait dynamics, in particular, implies a change in the configuration of the device in terms of contact points, actuation, and system dynamics in general. In order to provide a comfortable experience and maximize performance, the exoskeleton should be controlled smoothly and in a transparent way, which means respectively, minimizing the interaction forces with the user and jerky behavior due to transitions between different configurations. A previous study showed that a smooth control of the exoskeleton can be a…
École Polytechnique de Montréal（蒙特利尔理工学院）；Technopole in pediatric rehabilitation of Ste-Justine UHC（圣贾斯汀大学医院中心儿童康复科技园）
The potential of wearable robotics technology is undeniable. However, quantifying its value is difficult. Various types of exoskeleton robots have already been developed and tested for upper limb rehabilitation but, evaluations are not standardized, particularly in pediatric rehabilitation. This paper proposes a methodology for the quantitative evaluation of upper limb exoskeletons that, like a test bench, would serve for replicable testing. We determined the range of motion (ROM) and joint torques using both kinematic modeling and experimental measurements (using sensors integrated into Dynam…
The City University of New York, City College（纽约市立大学城市学院）
Pediatric exoskeletons offer great promise to increase mobility for children with crouch gait caused by cerebral palsy. A lightweight, compliant and user-specific actuator is critical for maximizing the benefits of an exoskeleton to users. To date, pediatric exoskeletons generally use the same actuators as adult exoskeletons, which are heavy and resistive to natural movement. There is yet no easy way for robotic exoskeletons to accommodate the changes in design requirements that occur as a child ages. We developed a lightweight (1.65 kg unilateral mass) and compliant pediatric knee exoskeleton…
A low-cost 1-DOF hand exoskeleton for neuromuscular rehabilitation has been designed and assembled. It consists of a base equipped with a servo motor, an index finger part, and a thumb part, connected through three gears. The index part has a tri-axial load cell and an attached ring to measure the finger force. An admittance control scheme was designed to provide intuitive control and positive force amplification to assist the user's finger movement. To evaluate the effects of different control parameters on neuromuscular re-sponse of the fingers, we created an integrated exoskeleton-hand musc…
Positive biomechanical outcomes have been reported with lower-limb exoskeletons in laboratory settings, but these devices have difficulty delivering appropriate assistance in synchrony with human gait as the task or rate of phase progression change in real-world environments. This paper presents a controller for an ankle exoskeleton that uses a data-driven kinematic model to continuously estimate the phase, phase rate, stride length, and ground incline states during locomotion, which enables the real-time adaptation of torque assistance to match human torques observed in a multi-activity datab…
Real-Time Decoding of Movement Onset and Offset for Brain-Controlled Rehabilitation Exoskeleton
Department of Electrical Engineering and Computer Science, Massachusetts Institute of Technology（麻省理工学院电气工程与计算机科学系）；Chandra Department of Electrical and Computer Engineering, The University of Texas at Austin（德克萨斯大学奥斯汀分校查兰电气与计算机工程系）；Department of Neurology, The University of Texas at Austin（德克萨斯大学奥斯汀分校神经病学系）；Walker Department of Mechanical Engineering, The University of Texas at Austin（德克萨斯大学奥斯汀分校沃克机械工程系）；Meta Reality Labs Research, Redmond, WA, USA（微软现实实验室，华盛顿州雷德蒙德）
Therapist-Exoskeleton-Patient Interaction for Gait Therapy
Shirley Ryan AbilityLab；Center for Robotics and Biosystems（机器人与生物系统中心）；Department of Biomedical Engineering（生物医学工程系）；Department of Mechanical Engineering（机械工程系）；Department of Physical Medicine and Rehabilitation（康复医学系）
New Jersey Institute of Technology（新泽西理工学院）；Kessler Foundation（凯斯勒基金会）；The City University of New York（纽约城市大学）
A significant challenge for the control of a robotic lower extremity rehabilitation exoskeleton is to ensure stability and robustness during programmed tasks or motions, which is crucial for the safety of the mobility-impaired user. Due to various levels of the user's disability, the human-exoskeleton interaction forces and external perturbations are unpredictable and could vary substantially and cause conventional motion controllers to behave unreliably or the robot to fall down. In this work, we propose a new, reinforcement learning-based, motion controller for a lower extremity rehabilitati…
Synthesizing Robust Walking Gaits via Discrete-Time Barrier Functions with Application to Multi-Contact Exoskeleton Locomotion
Georgia Institute of Technology（佐治亚理工学院）；School of Electrical and Computer Engineering（电气与计算机工程学院）；Woodruff School of Mechanical Engineering（伍德拉夫机械工程学院）；California Institute of Technology（加州理工学院）；Department of Computation and Neural Systems（计算与神经系统系）；Department of Mechanical and Civil Engineering（机械与土木工程系）；Department of Control and Dynamical Systems（控制与动力学系）
International Islamic University Malaysia（马来西亚国际伊斯兰大学）；University of Oklahoma（俄克拉荷马大学）
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 patients. Additionally, the huge size of some grounded exoskeletons consumes space while maintaining a sophisticated structure and require more expensive materials. In other words, to maintain affordability, the device's structure must be simple. Thus, in this work, a portable elbow exoskeleton is developed using SolidWorks to incorporate a Twisted Strings Ac…
Lower extremity exoskeleton has been developed as a motion assistive technology in recent years. Walking pattern generation is a fundamental topic in the design of these robots. The usual approach with most exoskeletons is to use a pre-recorded pattern as a look-up table. There are some deficiencies with this method, including data storage limitation and poor regulation relating to the walking parameters. Therefore modeling human walking patterns to use in exoskeletons is required. The few existing models provide piece by piece walking patterns, only generating at the beginning of each stride …
DRBA: Dynamic Robotic Balance Assistant -- An assist-as-needed gait and balance rehabilitation robot for versatile training
School of Mechanical and Aerospace Engineering, Nanyang Technological University（南洋理工大学机械与航天工程学院）；Guangdong Zhongxin Intelligent Rehabilitation Research Institute（广东众心智能康复研究院）；Guangdong Jianxiang Hospital Group（广东健翔医院集团）
California Institute of Technology（加州理工学院）；Wandercraft（Wandercraft公司）
This paper presents and experimentally demonstrates a novel framework for variable assistance on lower body exoskeletons, based upon safety-critical control methods. Existing work has shown that providing some freedom of movement around a nominal gait, instead of rigidly following it, accelerates the spinal learning process of people with a walking impediment when using a lower body exoskeleton. With this as motivation, we present a method to accurately control how much a subject is allowed to deviate from a given gait while ensuring robustness to patient perturbation. This method leverages co…
I present the design, implementation and control of a novel, linkage-based, underactuated hand exoskeleton aimed to assist patients with hand disabilities during grasping tasks for robot assisted physical rehabilitation or robot assisted activities of daily living. Even though the proposed exoskeleton was designed with the purpose of assisting users during interactions with real objects around them, its use can be extended for haptic applications as well. In this thesis, I will deeply mention the exoskeletons in the literature, detail the design decisions and implement various control strategi…
California Institute of Technology（加州理工学院）；Wandercraft SAS（旺德工艺有限公司）
This paper presents an active stabilization method for a fully actuated lower-limb exoskeleton. The method was tested on the exoskeleton ATALANTE, which was designed and built by the French start-up company Wandercraft. The main objective of this paper is to present a practical method of realizing more robust walking on hardware through active ankle compensation. The nominal gait was generated through the hybrid zero dynamic framework. The ankles are individually controlled to establish three main directives; (1) keeping the non-stance foot parallel to the ground, (2) maintaining rigid contact…
This paper presents a method for tailoring a parametric controller based on human ratings. The method leverages supervised learning concepts in order to train a reward model from data. It is applied to a gait rehabilitation robot with the goal of teaching the robot how to walk patients physiologically. In this context, the reward model judges the physiology of the gait cycle (instead of therapists) using sensor measurements provided by the robot and the automatic feedback controller chooses the input settings of the robot to maximize the reward. The key advantage of the proposed method is that…
Unidirectional Human-Robot-Human Physical Interaction for Gait Training
The Biorobotics Institute, Scuola Superiore Sant’Anna（圣安娜高等学校生物机器人研究所）；Department of Excellence in Robotics & AI, Scuola Superiore Sant’Anna（圣安娜高等学校机器人与人工智能卓越系）；Shirley Ryan AbilityLab（雪莉·瑞安能力实验室）；Center for Robotics and Biosystems of Northwestern University（西北大学机器人与生物系统中心）；Department of Biomedical Engineering, Northwestern University（西北大学生物医学工程系）；Department of Physical Medicine and Rehabilitation, Northwestern University（西北大学物理医学与康复系）
