Investigating the Relationship Between an Intelligent Trunk Exoskeleton and Its Wearer as a Basis for Improved Assistance and Rehabilitation

腰痛（LBP）是导致残疾的主要原因，也是降低工作效率和工资损失的重要因素。智能、自适应躯干外骨骼是一种新型的可穿戴机器人系统，它可以减少或重新分配脊柱和躯干肌肉的负荷，从而提供一种非手术和非药物的腰痛干预，可能比标准脊柱矫形器更有效，因为智能外骨骼将有能力调整其机械支持以适应佩戴者不断变化的活动和需求。该项目的研究目标是表征双向适应，这将促进智能躯干外骨骼与其佩戴者之间有用和舒适的互动。该项目提供了三个“工作包”，这将发展关于躯干外骨骼在研究实验室内外的各种活动中对人体运动和生理的影响的基本知识。该项目还将增加有关智能外骨骼如何以特定活动方式适应佩戴者的知识，以及佩戴者的外骨骼使用模式如何随着时间的推移而演变。该项目将通过推进躯干外骨骼的有效设计和部署来促进国家的健康和繁荣，这将对人类的健康和生产力产生广泛的影响。例如，智能躯干外骨骼可以帮助从事农业和物料搬运等职业的工人举起更重的负载，同时降低受伤的风险。该项目的更广泛影响包括将项目技术和成果整合到本科和研究生课程中，以及向K-12和社区大学学生、腰痛患者和普通公众推广。该项目的智力价值是通过组织成“工作包”的三套人体受试者实验来推进的。首先确定外骨骼的压缩和刚度对穿戴者躯干生物力学、代谢负荷、任务完成策略以及在低强度、高强度和不可预测的实验室活动中的感知舒适度的各个方面的影响。该结果将为如何调整外骨骼压缩和刚度以提高任务性能和舒适度提供见解。第二个工作包将传感器和执行器集成到外骨骼中，从而允许智能算法推断佩戴者的姿势和预期任务，并以适合任务的方式重新配置外骨骼。此外，智能手机应用程序将允许用户使用简单的用户界面手动调整外骨骼的配置。自动和手动方法将在实验室实验中进行比较，涉及有和没有LBP的参与者。第三个工作包执行一个为期2周的，基于家庭的，无监督的自适应主干外骨骼评估，以检查用户如何？我们与外骨骼的关系会随着时间的推移而发展，比如用户是否会在使用设备的过程中开发出新的使用策略。在为期两周的评估期之前、期间和之后，将进行有监督的实验室评估，以确定外骨骼的长期使用经验如何影响其有效性。该奖项反映了美国国家科学基金会的法定使命，并通过使用基金会的知识价值和更广泛的影响审查标准进行评估，被认为值得支持。

Low back pain (LBP) is a leading cause of disability and a significant contributor to reduced work productivity and wage loss. Intelligent, adaptive trunk exoskeletons are a novel class of wearable robotic systems that reduce or redistribute the load on the spine and trunk muscles, thereby offering a nonsurgical and nonpharmaceutical LBP intervention that may be more effective that standard spinal orthoses because intelligent exoskeletons will have the capability to adapt their mechanical support to the changing activities and needs of the wearer. The research objective of this project is to characterize the bidirectional adaptations that will promote useful and comfortable interactions between an intelligent trunk exoskeleton and its wearer. The project offers three "work packages", which will develop fundamental knowledge about the effects a trunk exoskeleton has on human movement and physiology in a variety of activities performed in and out of the research lab. The project will also increase knowledge about how intelligent exoskeletons can adapt themselves to the wearer in an activity-specific manner, and how the wearer's exoskeleton usage patterns evolve over time. The project will promote the nation's health and prosperity by advancing the effective design and deployment of trunk exoskeletons, which will have broad impact on human health and productivity. For example, intelligent trunk exoskeletons could help workers in occupations like agriculture and materials handling to lift heavier loads with lower risk of injury. Broader impacts of the project include the integration of project technology and results into undergraduate and graduate courses, as well as outreach to K-12 and community college students, individuals with low back pain, and to the general public.The project's Intellectual Merit is advanced through three sets of human subject experiments organized into "work packages". The first determines the effects of the exoskeleton's compression and stiffness on various aspects of the wearer's trunk biomechanics, metabolic load, task completion strategy, and perceived comfort during low-intensity, high-intensity, and unpredictable laboratory-based activities. The results will provide insight into how exoskeleton compression and stiffness can be adjusted to enhance task performance and comfort. The second work package integrates sensors and actuators into the exoskeleton, thereby allowing an intelligent algorithm to infer the wearer's posture and intended task, and to reconfigure the exoskeleton's fit in a task-appropriate manner. Additionally, a smartphone app will let users manually adjust the exoskeleton's configuration using a simple user interface. The automatic and manual approaches will be compared in lab-based experiments involving participants with and without LBP. The third work package performs a 2-week, home-based, unsupervised evaluation of the adaptive trunk exoskeleton to examine how the user?s relationship with the exoskeleton evolves over time, such as whether users develop new usage strategies as they gain experience with the device. Supervised laboratory evaluations will be performed before, during, and after the 2-week evaluation period to determine how extended experience with the exoskeleton affects its effectiveness.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.