CAREER: Closing the Loop on Walking: From Hybrid Systems to Bipedal Robots to Prosthetic Devices and Back

该学院早期职业发展（CAREER）资助通过对双足机器人动态行走的拟人化动机研究为混合动力系统的基础提供资金，特别关注混合动力系统特有的行为和假肢设计的应用。双足行走是复杂动态稳定行为的典型例子。 混合系统-具有连续和离散行为的系统-提供了一种建模范式，在其中捕获高度复杂系统的行为，导致在连续和离散系统中没有发现的新现象。 双足步行机器人自然被建模为混合系统，这是这两个领域的融合-双足步行和混合系统-提供了一个独特的机会，以进一步了解这些领域中的每一个。 该项目使用人类行走的研究，以获得准确的和拟人的混合模型的双足机器人，设计控制律，通过使用几何减少产生类似人类的行走，正式研究所产生的混合动力系统的稳定性和鲁棒性，并使用这种累积的理解双足行走设计假肢设备。 该项目的基本思想的应用是深远的，提供了新的研究方向，在混合动力系统和步行的基本机制的新的理解。 将这种理解应用于假肢设备的设计可能会对数百万下肢截肢者的生活质量产生巨大影响。 此外，双足运动的拟人化性质对所有年龄和人口统计的人都有广泛的吸引力，极大地促进了推广和教育。

This Faculty Early Career Development (CAREER) grant provides funding for contributions to the foundations of hybrid systems through the anthropomorphically motivated study of dynamic walking of bipedal robots, with a special focus on behavior unique to hybrid systems and applications to prosthesis design. Bipedal walking is a quintessential example of complex dynamically stable behavior. Hybrid systems---systems with both continuous and discrete behavior---provide a modeling paradigm in which to capture the behavior of highly complex systems, resulting in new phenomena not found in continuous and discrete systems. Bipedal walking robots are naturally modeled as hybrid systems, and it is the confluence of these two areas---bipedal walking and hybrid systems---that affords a unique opportunity to further the understanding of each of these areas. This project uses studies of human walking to obtain accurate and anthropomorphic hybrid models of bipedal robots, designs control laws that yield human-like walking through the use of geometric reduction, formally studies the stability and robustness of the resulting hybrid systems, and uses this cumulative understanding of bipedal walking to design prosthesis devices. The applications of the ideas underlying this project are far reaching, providing new research directions in hybrid systems and a new understanding of the fundamental mechanisms underlying walking. Applying this understanding to the design of prosthesis devices could have a dramatic impact on the quality of life of the millions of lower body extremity amputees. Furthermore, the anthropomorphic nature of bipedal locomotion has wide appeal to people of all ages and demographics, greatly facilitating outreach and education.