NRI: A Compliant Lower-Body Exoskeleton to Enable Balanced Walking for Patients with Spinal Cord Injuries

脊髓损伤可导致腿部完全瘫痪，严重限制活动能力，降低生活质量。在提供一定行走能力的可穿戴外骨骼方面已经取得了重大进展，但这些外骨骼需要使用拐杖，这对穿戴者产生了不自然的负载，并且限制了手和手臂的使用。这项研究的目的是开发一种下半身外骨骼，能够在不使用拐杖的情况下保持平衡和行走，从而使佩戴者能够与环境互动并保持正确的姿势。由此产生的平台将通过给予脊髓损伤患者目前无法实现的活动水平来改善他们的整体生活质量。这项工作将应用类人机器人领域的先进方法，为功能障碍者设计外骨骼。具体来说，该项目将应用一种称为全身控制的方法，该方法可以同时找到解决多个运动目标的运动，并将其应用于具有12个自由度的下半身外骨骼，提供类似于自然人类运动的运动范围，但脚踝偏航除外。高保真度的扭矩控制将实现使用系列弹性致动器，使顺应运动的佩戴者。

Spinal cord injuries can lead to complete leg paralysis, drastically limiting mobility and reducing quality of life. Significant progress has been made towards wearable exoskeletons that provide some ability to walk, but these require the use of crutches, which create unnatural loads on the wearer, as well as restricting use of the hands and arms. The objective of this research is to develop a lower body exoskeleton able to balance and walk without the use of crutches, thus allowing the wearers to interact with their environment and maintain proper posture. The resulting platform will improve the overall quality of life for those with spinal cord injury by granting them a level of mobility that is currently unachievable. This work will apply methods advanced in the field of humanoid robots to the design of exoskeletons for functionally impaired persons. Specifically, the project will apply a method called whole-body control, which finds motions that resolve multiple motion objectives at once, to a lower body exoskeleton with 12 degrees of freedom, providing a range of movement similar to natural human locomotion, with the exception of ankle yaw. High fidelity torque control will be achieved using series elastic actuators to enable compliant locomotion of the wearer.