This paper exposes a control architecture enabling rehabilitation of walking impaired patients with the lower-limb exoskeleton Atalante. Atalante's control system is modified to allow the patient to contribute to the walking motion through their efforts. Only the swing leg degree of freedom along the nominal path is relaxed. An online trajectory optimization checks that the muscle forces do not jeopardize stability. The optimization generates reference trajectories that satisfy several key constraints from the current point to the end of the step. One of the constraints requires that the center or pressure remains inside the support polygon, which ensures that the support leg subsystem successfully tracks the reference trajectory. As a result of the presented works, the robot provides a non-zero force in the direction of motion only when required, helping the patient go fast enough to maintain balance (or preventing him from going too fast). Experimental results are reported. They illustrate that variations of $\pm$50% of the duration of the step can be achieved in response to the patient's efforts and that many steps are achieved without falling. A video of the experiments can be viewed at https://youtu.be/_1A-2nLy5ZE
Autonomous robots require online trajectory planning capability to operate in the real world. Efficient offline trajectory planning methods already exist, but are computationally demanding, preventing their use online. In this paper, we present a novel algorithm called Guided Trajectory Learning that learns a function approximation of solutions computed through trajectory optimization while ensuring accurate and reliable predictions. This function approximation is then used online to generate trajectories. This algorithm is designed to be easy to implement, and practical since it does not requ…
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 …
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…
Hybrid Data-Driven Predictive Control for Robust and Reactive Exoskeleton Locomotion Synthesis
Department of Computation and Neural Systems, Caltech（计算与神经系统系，加州理工学院）；Department of Mechanical and Civil Engineering, Caltech（机械与土木工程系，加州理工学院）；Wandercraft；Department of Computing and Mathematical Sciences, Caltech（计算与数学科学系，加州理工学院）；Department of Control and Dynamical Systems, Caltech（控制与动态系统系，加州理工学院）
State-of-the-art reinforcement learning is now able to learn versatile locomotion, balancing and push-recovery capabilities for bipedal robots in simulation. Yet, the reality gap has mostly been overlooked and the simulated results hardly transfer to real hardware. Either it is unsuccessful in practice because the physics is over-simplified and hardware limitations are ignored, or regularity is not guaranteed, and unexpected hazardous motions can occur. This paper presents a reinforcement learning framework capable of learning robust standing push recovery for bipedal robots that smoothly tran…
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…
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…
Imperial College London（帝国理工学院）；University of Paris-Est Créteil（巴黎东克雷泰伊大学）；McLaren Applied（迈凯伦应用公司）
Loss of mobility or balance resulting from neural trauma is a critical consideration in public health. Robotic exoskeletons hold great potential for rehabilitation and assisted movement, yet optimal assist-as-needed (AAN) control remains unresolved given pathological variance among patients. We introduce a model predictive control (MPC) architecture for lower limb exoskeletons centred around a fuzzy logic algorithm (FLA) identifying modes of assistance based on human involvement. Assistance modes are: 1) passive for human relaxed and robot dominant, 2) active-assist for human cooperation with …
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）；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…
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）
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…
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…
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…
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…
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…
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）
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 gener…
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）
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…
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…
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）
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）
Flexible Exoskeleton Control Based on Binding Alignment Strategy and Full-arm Coordination Mechanism
College of Intelligence Science and Technology, National University of Defense Technology（国防科技大学智能科学学院）；China Academy of Launch Vehicle Technology（中国运载火箭技术研究院）
Majority of stroke survivors are left with poorly functioning paretic hands. Current rehabilitation devices have failed to motivate the patients enough to continue rehabilitation exercises. The objective of this project, MIDAS (Multi-sensorial Immersive Dynamic Autonomous System) is a proof of concept by using an immersive system to improve motivation of stroke patients for hand rehabilitation. MIDAS is intended for stroke patients who suffer from light to mild stroke. MIDAS is lightweight and portable. It consists of a hand exoskeleton subsystem, a Virtual Reality (VR) subsystem, and an olfac…
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…
Characterizing the onset and offset of motor imagery during passive arm movements induced by an upper-body exoskeleton
Chandra Department of Electrical and Computer Engineering, The University of Texas at Austin（查拉德电气与计算机工程系，德克萨斯大学奥斯汀分校）；Department of Neurology, The University of Texas at Austin（神经病学系，德克萨斯大学奥斯汀分校）；Walker Department of Mechanical Engineering, The University of Texas at Austin（沃克机械工程系，德克萨斯大学奥斯汀分校）
Detecting Heel Strike and toe off Events Using Kinematic Methods and LSTM Models
School of Artificial Intelligence and Robotics, Hunan University（湖南大学人工智能与机器人学院）；School of Mechanical and Aerospace Engineering, Nanyang Technological University（南洋理工大学机械与航空航天工程学院）；Fourth Hospital of Changsha, Hunan Normal University（长沙第四医院，湖南师范大学）；Department of Stomatology, Hunan Provincial People’s Hospital, Hunan Normal University（湖南省级人民医院口腔科，湖南师范大学）；Rehabilitation Research Institute of Singapore, Lee Kong Chian School of Medicine, Nanyang Technological University（新加坡康复研究中心，李光前医学院，南洋理工大学）
Hierarchical Reinforcement Learning Framework for Adaptive Walking Control Using General Value Functions of Lower-Limb Sensor Signals
Department of Biomedical Engineering University of Utah（生物医学工程系 乌得勒支大学）；Alberta Machine Intelligence Institute (Amii) Department of Medicine Department of Computing Science University of Alberta（阿尔伯塔机器智能研究所（Amii） 医学院 计算科学系 阿尔伯塔大学）；Department of Biomedical Engineering Department of Physical Medicine and Rehabilitation University of Utah（生物医学工程系 理疗科 乌得勒支大学）
Motor Control Insights on Walking Planner and its Stability
Rehabilitation Research Institute of Singapore（新加坡康复研究院）；Nanyang Technological University（南洋理工大学）；University of Edinburgh（爱丁堡大学）；Kyungpook National University（庆北国立大学）
