CAREER: Hybrid Ankle Exoskeleton Therapy to Optimize Long-Term Gait Rehabilitation

NSF学院早期职业发展(CALEAR)项目旨在推进步行康复的科学研究，并开创一种新的可穿戴康复策略。迫切需要解决行走障碍的根本原因的治疗，包括力量、肌肉控制和协调能力受损。虽然可穿戴的机器人外骨骼对行走障碍的个人具有潜力，但之前的研究重点是通过电动辅助立即改善行走能力。这个项目试图了解，交替使用可穿戴的脚踝外骨骼的辅助和阻力是否会比单独使用这两种方法都能带来更大的步行改善。该项目的成果有可能改变各种条件下行走障碍的治疗方法。通过辅助机器人与工程学的新课程，本项目旨在激励工科学生应对残疾人所面临的挑战，并改进以人为中心的设计的工程学教育。本职业项目的目的是开发基于自适应辅助和阻力混合应用的步态康复的整体治疗框架，并将其应用于脚踝足底屈肌功能障碍的治疗。第一个目标是建立关于不同程度行走障碍的适应性足底屈肌辅助和抵抗的混合式提供的基础知识。第二个目标是开发一个框架，通过使用整体绩效指标(同时考虑时空和神经肌肉结果)和人工神经网络来优化混合外骨骼疗法的长期交付，以学习随着时间的推移参与者的反应。第三个目标是验证混合优化框架相对于仅有辅助和阻力的训练，并将混合外骨骼训练与标准步态训练进行比较。这一职业项目有望引领长期人在环优化技术的发展，从而在神经肌肉功能和行走能力方面提供持久的改善。该项目将建立关于疾病严重性与可穿戴式辅助和抵抗力之间相互作用的基本知识。开发的策略将是可推广的，使其他研究人员能够将此框架应用于不同类型的控制算法、设备、关节和患者群体。作为该项目的一部分，将开发新的辅助机器人与工程(CARE)课程，包括高级机器人课程模块、为残疾而设计的顶石项目和K-12经验。预计参与关怀的学生将更好地了解肢体残疾人士的需求，这将转化为有效的工程解决方案，并产生更有动力、更有洞察力和更有影响力的工程学学生和专业人员。该奖项反映了NSF的法定使命，并通过使用基金会的智力优势和更广泛的影响审查标准进行评估，被认为值得支持。

This NSF Faculty Early Career Development (CAREER) project seeks to advance the scientific study of walking rehabilitation and pioneer a novel wearable rehabilitation strategy. There is a critical need for treatments that address the root causes of walking disability, including impaired strength, muscle control, and coordination. While wearable robotic exoskeletons hold potential for individuals with walking disabilities, prior research has focused on immediate improvements in walking performance from powered assistance. This project seeks to understand if alternating assistance and resistance with a wearable ankle exoskeleton will elicit greater improvements in walking than either approach alone. The outcomes of this project have the potential to transform the treatment of walking disabilities across a wide range of conditions. Through a new curriculum in assistive robotics and engineering, this project aims to motivate engineering students to address the challenges experienced by individuals with disabilities and improve engineering education on human-centered design.The purpose of this CAREER project is to develop a holistic treatment framework for gait rehabilitation based on the hybrid application of adaptive assistance and resistance and apply it to the treatment of ankle plantar-flexor dysfunction. The first objective is to establish foundational knowledge on the hybrid delivery of adaptive plantar-flexor assistance and resistance across different severities of walking impairment. The second objective is to develop a framework to optimize the long-term delivery of the hybrid exoskeleton therapy through the use of a holistic performance metric, accounting for both spatiotemporal and neuromuscular outcomes, and an artificial neural network to learn from participant responses over time. The third objective is to validate the hybrid optimization framework against training with assistance and resistance alone and compare hybrid exoskeleton training to standard gait training. This CAREER project is expected to pioneer the development of long-term human-in-the-loop optimization techniques to deliver lasting improvements in neuromuscular function and walking ability. This project will establish fundamental knowledge on the interplay between disease severity and wearable assistance and resistance. The strategies developed will be generalizable, enabling other investigators to apply this framework to different types of control algorithms, devices, joints, and patient populations. New Curriculum in Assistive Robotics and Engineering (CARE) will be developed as part of this project, incorporating advanced robotics course modules, design-for-disability capstone projects, and K-12 experiences. It is anticipated that the students involved in CARE will gain an improved understanding of the needs of people with physical disabilities, which will translate into effective engineering solutions, and result in more motivated, insightful, and impactful engineering students and professionals.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.