ERI: Autonomous Personalized Control of Lower Limb Exoskeletons using Impedance Regulation and Trajectory Shaping

与传统的物理治疗方法相比，使用动力外骨骼来帮助身体残疾和神经损伤的人可以提供持续和长期的帮助。虽然外骨骼现在被部署用于辅助和康复，但确保机器人和穿戴者之间的顺应性和灵活性仍然是一个尚未解决的问题。目前的外骨骼通常不考虑穿戴者和机器人之间的交互，而是依赖于预先计划的行走运动。这个工程研究启动（ERI）项目旨在促进对下肢外骨骼实时个性化运动策略开发的研究。本研究将设计并实现自主运动规划和阻抗控制策略，主要有两个挑战性的目的：1）在线塑造个性化的步行轨迹以提高人体舒适度; 2）在人机交互过程中实时调整外骨骼阻抗。因此，将为下肢外骨骼开发智能控制策略，以促进外骨骼自主性和人类安全性之间的平衡，这在技术上具有挑战性，因为人类的非被动和不可预测的行为使得检测其意图并确保外骨骼响应的灵活性变得更加困难。在本研究项目中将追求的控制策略将推进各种下肢人类机器人交互任务的跨学科研究，例如运动疗法，辅助运动和由外骨骼增强的人类行为评估。因此，这项研究将推进辅助机器人领域，对各种残疾人和脊髓损伤，中风和其他损伤/疾病引起的神经系统疾病的生活质量产生广泛的影响。这项研究具有更广泛的影响，以帮助职业工人在进行繁重的体力活动，负荷对他们的下肢，这将减少和防止他们的原发性和继发性伤害。这个奖项反映了NSF的法定使命，并已被认为是值得支持的评估使用基金会的智力价值和更广泛的影响审查标准。

The use of powered exoskeletons to assist persons with physical disabilities and neurological impairments can provide consistent and long-term assistance in comparison to conventional physical therapy methods. Although exoskeletons are now deployed for assistance and rehabilitation, ensuring compliant and flexible interactions between the robot and wearer remains an unresolved issue. Current exoskeletons often do not account for the interaction between the wearer and the robot, relying on pre-planned walking motions. This Engineering Research Initiation (ERI) project aims to spur research into the development of real-time, personalized locomotion strategies for lower limb exoskeletons. The outcomes of this research could lead to safer and more compliant rehabilitation robotic systems.In this project, autonomous locomotion planning and impedance control strategies will be designed and implemented with two challenging purposes: 1) online shaping of personalized walking trajectory to enhance human comfort and 2) real-time adjustment of the exoskeleton impedance during human-robot interaction. Accordingly, intelligent control strategies will be developed for lower-limb exoskeletons to facilitate a balance between exoskeleton autonomy and human safety, which is technically challenging due to the non-passive and unpredictable behaviors of humans that make the detection of their intention and ensuring the flexibility of the exoskeleton's response harder. The control strategies that will be pursued in this research project will advance the trending interdisciplinary research on various lower-limb human robot interaction tasks such as movement therapies, assistive locomotion, and human behavior assessment augmented by an exoskeleton. Accordingly, this research will advance the field of assistive robotics to have a widespread impact on the quality of life for a variety of people with disabilities and neurological conditions caused by spinal cord injury, stroke, and other injuries/diseases. This research has a broader impact to assist occupational workers in performing heavy manual activities with loading on their lower limbs, which will decrease and prevent their primary and secondary injuries.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.