NRI: INT: COLLAB: Anthropomorphic Robotic Ankle Prosthesis with Programmable Materials

目前有200万美国人接受截肢；其中大多数是下肢截肢。截肢是一件重大的改变生活的事件，它对生活的许多方面都有压倒性的负面影响，甚至在受伤后几年也是如此。腿部截肢的费用可能超过每人180万美元。大多数可用的假体都是为了在平地行走时复制正常踝关节功能的某些方面而设计的。这些假体使许多膝盖以下截肢的人能够恢复基本的日常活动。然而，这些设备最适合于平地行走，许多用户在执行其他重要任务时会遇到困难，例如在斜坡、楼梯或不同地形上行走。因此，该项目的总体目标是通过使新的假体能够适应日常生活中常见的不同环境条件来解决现有动力踝足假体设计中的这一差距。提出的踝足机构通过引入一种新的设计方法显著提高了小腿动力假体的定制化能力。这个项目将研究人类脚踝僵硬在不同行走场景中的变化。研究小组将利用这些信息来设计一种具有与人类脚踝更相似特性的电动脚踝-脚假体。为了做到这一点，将开发一种使用可编程材料的轻便模块化假体。模块化的机械设计和控制方法产生了类似人类的特征，使更多具有不同长度截肢腿的用户能够使用这种假肢。此外，假肢的性能将在动态环境中的真实活动中进行评估。这个项目的重点是截肢者的福祉。由此产生的灵活的脚踝假体将帮助截肢者提高他们的身体功能、工作能力和娱乐能力，从而帮助个人恢复到受伤前的活动和生活质量。该项目的研究成果也可应用于外骨骼、矫形和康复机器人的功能提升。除了推进研究，本科生和研究生还将参与研究活动，并将获得跨学科教育/创新/拓展经验。外联活动将使项目团队能够让不同的初中生和高中生学习科学和工程，特别是那些来自代表人数不足的群体和低收入家庭的学生。该项目计划设计一种新的可定制的灵活踝足假体，该假体在设计上是模块化的，其阻抗调制与其扭矩控制解耦。这将通过为一种新颖的、最近开发的动力2自由度(DOF)踝足假体配备由软可编程材料构建的增强机构来实现。该项目的主要成果将是全面了解如何1)降低临床试验中观察到的踝足假体控制的复杂性，以及2)提高假体在真实世界活动中的性能，如在具有不同轮廓、僵硬和侧向倾斜的表面上行走和跑步。计划中的工作旨在解决机器人脚踝假肢的定制化问题，并通过提高截肢者的生活和工作质量来解决社会影响。这项研究的主要目的是将脚踝的阻抗控制巩固到一个由可编程材料组成的机械模块，以跟踪2-D人体脚踝的阻抗。这项工作将进一步将阻抗调制与脚踝的2-DOF扭矩控制相结合，以提供定制所需的灵活性，以便在扭矩控制调整的同时根据每个用户的需要量身定做灵活的假体。该项目的研究人员假设，实时控制机器人踝足假体中的二维踝关节阻抗可以提高用户在不同轮廓、刚度和倾斜度的表面上行走时的性能和灵活性。相互关联的研究推力将通过1)在不同步态场景下对脚踝动力学进行建模，2)为两自由度机器人踝足假体配备可编程材料模块，以及3)对截肢者进行广泛的评估实验，提供提供新解决方案的机会。了解假肢行走过程中二维踝关节阻抗的控制和适应效果对辅助机器人领域具有重要意义，因为它可以为电动假肢、外骨骼和康复设备的设计和控制提供指导。除了推进研究，本科生和研究生还将参与研究活动，并将获得跨学科教育/创新/拓展经验。外联活动将使项目小组能够吸引不同的初中生和高中生，特别是那些来自代表人数不足的群体和低收入家庭的学生。该项目的发现将通过出版物、软件共享和技术商业化进行传播。该奖项反映了NSF的法定使命，并通过使用基金会的智力优势和更广泛的影响审查标准进行评估，被认为值得支持。

There are currently 2 million Americans living with an amputation; the majority of those amputations are of the lower limbs. Leg amputation is a significant life-altering event that has an overwhelmingly negative effect on many aspects of life, even years after the injury. Leg amputation can cost in excess of $1.8 million per individual. Most available prostheses are designed to replicate some aspects of normal ankle function during level-ground walking. These prostheses allow many individuals with below-knee amputation to return to basic daily activities. However, these devices are best suited for level-ground walking and many users experience difficulties during other important tasks, such as walking on slopes, stairs, or different terrains. Therefore, the general aim of this project is to address this gap in the design of existing powered ankle-foot prostheses by enabling new prosthetics that adapt to different environmental conditions commonly found in daily life. The proposed ankle-foot mechanism significantly enhances the customizability of lower leg-powered prostheses by introducing a new design approach. This project will study how the human ankle stiffness changes during different walking scenarios. The research team will use this information to design a powered ankle-foot prosthesis with properties more similar to the human ankle. In order to do so, a lightweight and modular prosthesis that uses programmable material will be developed. The modular mechanical design and control approach generates human-like characteristics and enables a larger set of users with different lengths of amputated legs to use this prosthesis. Moreover, the prosthesis' performance will be evaluated during real-world activities in dynamic environments. The focus of this project is on amputees' well-being. The resulting agile ankle foot prosthesis will help amputees improve their physical function, ability to work, and recreation, thus helping individuals return to the activities and quality of life they had prior to injury. The research findings from this project can also be applied to advance functions of exoskeletons, orthotics, and rehabilitation robots. In addition to advancing research, undergraduate and graduate students will be involved in research activities and will receive interdisciplinary education/innovation/outreach experiences. Outreach activities will allow the project team to engage diverse middle and high school students in science and engineering, especially those from underrepresented groups and low-income families. This project plans a new class of customizable agile ankle-foot prosthesis that is modular in design and has its impedance modulation decoupled from its torque control. This will be achieved by equipping a novel and recently developed powered 2-degrees of freedom (DOF) ankle-foot prosthesis with an augmented mechanism built from soft programmable material. The primary outcomes of this project will be a comprehensive understanding of how to 1) reduce the complexity of the control of ankle-foot prostheses, as observed in clinical trials, and 2) enhance prosthesis performance in real-world activities, such as walking and running on surfaces with different profiles, stiffness, and lateral inclinations. The planned work aims to address customizability issues of robotic ankle foot prostheses and address societal impact by improving amputees' quality of life and work. The main goal of this study is to consolidate the impedance control of the ankle to a mechanical module comprised of programmable material to follow the 2-D human ankle impedance. The effort will further integrate the impedance modulation with 2-DOF torque control of the ankle to provide the customizability required for tailoring an agile prosthesis to each user's need in parallel to the torque control tuning. The project researchers hypothesize that real-time control of the two-dimensional ankle impedance in a robotic ankle-foot prosthesis can improve the performance and the agility of the user during walking on surfaces with different profiles, stiffness, and inclinations. The interconnected research thrusts will provide the opportunity to offer a new solution through 1) modeling the ankle dynamics in different gait scenarios, 2) equipping a 2-DOF robotic ankle-foot prosthesis with a programmable material module, and 3) performing extensive evaluation experiments with amputees. Understanding the effect of the control and adaptation of the 2-D ankle impedance during walking with a lower extremity prosthesis will be significantly beneficial for the field of assistive robotics because it can provide guidelines for the design and control of powered prostheses, exoskeletons, and rehabilitation devices. In addition to advancing research, undergraduate and graduate students will be involved in research activities and will receive interdisciplinary education/innovation/outreach experiences. Outreach activities will allow the project team to engage diverse middle and high school students, especially those from underrepresented groups and low-income families. The findings from this project will be disseminated through publications, software sharing, and technology commercialization.This award reflects NSF's statutory mission and has been deemed worthy of support through evaluation using the Foundation's intellectual merit and broader impacts review criteria.