Collaborative Research: An Integrated, Proactive, and Ubiquitous Prosthetic Care Robot for People with Lower Limb Amputation: Sensing, Device Designing, and Control

下肢截肢患者在行走时面临多种不利因素，如下背部压力增加、代谢成本增加和步态不对称。现有的假肢机器人处方存在几个缺陷：它们要么不能提供准确和及时的设备控制，要么只能在受限的实验室环境下使用。下肢截肢者面临的主要挑战是，不再有任何通过眼睛获得的视觉信息对设备进行反馈控制。因此，身体的其他部分需要额外的肌肉组织来补偿增加的不稳定性，这就增加了摔倒和负面关节问题的风险。该奖项旨在开发一种新型假肢机器人，该机器人将利用视觉信息的神经肌肉反馈重建，在不同的行走条件下提供主动和最佳控制。该项目的结果将有助于临床医生在开具下肢假体处方时提供更好的护理，并对生活在美国的截肢者的生活产生积极影响。此外，该项目将为工程、计算机科学和医学的本科生和研究生创建一个多学科教育计划，包括设计和控制、人机界面、传感器和机器学习方面的知识。残障学生也将通过数据收集、会议和指导参与其中。该项目的目标是开发一种新的假肢机器人，能够主动和用户特定的假肢控制，以改善日常生活中各种条件下的行走功能。该方法依赖于传感策略、设备硬件和控制框架的相关进展，如下所示。1)将开发一种仅使用可穿戴惯性运动单元（IMU）传感器的运动捕捉方法，以重建和预测日常生活中的人类步态，同时实现实验室环境之外的评估和临床诊断。这将通过一种知识蒸馏方法来实现，该方法利用使用多种传感模式的复杂教师网络来训练仅使用IMU传感器的简单学生网络。2)将开发一种轻便、节能、半主动的气动和液压混合装置，使用户能够根据操作环境调整设置。3)开发一种基于强化学习的自适应算法来控制和同步用户-设备合作。此外，将借鉴实时系统领域的混合临界设计范式，以确保机器人的安全性和稳定性。该项目由跨部门机器人基础研究项目支持，由工程（ENG）和计算机与信息科学与工程（CISE）联合管理和资助。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。

Individuals with lower limb amputation face multiple disadvantages while walking, such as increased strains on the lower back, increased metabolic cost, and gait asymmetry. Existing prosthetic robot prescriptions suffer from several deficiencies: they either cannot provide accurate and prompt device control or can only be used under a constrained laboratory environment. The key challenge for lower limb amputees is that there is no longer any feedback control to the device from the visual information obtained through the eyes. As a result, the rest of the body requires extra musculature recruitment to compensate for the increased instability, posing a greater risk of falling and negative joint issues. This award aims to develop a novel prosthetic robot that would use the reconstruction of the neuromuscular feedback from the visual information to provide proactive and optimal control in different walking conditions. The outcome of this project will help clinicians provide enhanced care when prescribing lower limb prostheses and positively affect the lives of amputees living within the United States. In addition, this project will create a multidisciplinary education program comprising knowledge of design and control, human-machine interface, sensors, and machine learning for undergraduate and graduate students from engineering, computer science, and medicine. Students with disabilities will also participate through data collection, meetings, and mentorship.The objective of this project is to develop a new prosthetic robot that enables proactive and user-specific prosthetic control to improve walking function in a variety of conditions found in daily life. The approach relies on interrelated advances in sensing strategy, device hardware, and control framework as follows. 1) A motion capture method using only wearable inertial motion unit (IMU) sensors will be developed to reconstruct and predict human gait in daily living, while enabling assessment and clinical diagnosis beyond lab settings. This will be achieved through a knowledge distillation method leveraging a complex teacher network using multiple sensing modalities to train a simpler student network that only uses IMU sensors. 2) A lightweight, energy-efficient, and semi-active pneumatic and hydraulic hybrid device will be developed to enable the user to tune settings as per the operating environment. 3) A reinforcement-learning-based adaptive algorithm will be developed to control and sync user-device cooperation. In addition, the mixed-criticality design paradigm will be borrowed from the real-time systems field to ensure the safety and stability of the robot.This project is supported by the cross-directorate Foundational Research in Robotics program, jointly managed and funded by the Directorates for Engineering (ENG) and Computer and Information Science and Engineering (CISE).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.