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。尽管外骨骼现在被部署用于辅助和康复，但确保机器人和佩戴者之间顺从和灵活的互动仍然是一个悬而未决的问题。目前的外骨骼往往不考虑佩戴者和机器人之间的相互作用，依赖于预先规划的行走动作。这一工程研究启动(ERI)项目旨在推动对开发实时、个性化的下肢外骨骼运动策略的研究。在本项目中，自主运动规划和阻抗控制策略将设计和实现两个具有挑战性的目标：1)在线塑造个性化行走轨迹以提高人类舒适性；2)在人-机器人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和确保外骨骼反应的灵活性变得更加困难。本研究项目中将采用的控制策略将推动对各种腿部人类机器人交互任务的趋势的跨学科研究，如运动疗法、辅助运动和外骨骼增强的人类行为评估。因此，这项研究将推动辅助机器人领域的发展，使其对因脊髓损伤、中风和其他伤害/疾病而导致的各种残疾和神经疾病患者的生活质量产生广泛影响。这项研究对帮助职业工人进行负重的体力活动具有更广泛的影响，这将减少和预防他们的原发和继发性伤害。该奖项反映了NSF的法定使命，并通过使用基金会的智力价值和更广泛的影响审查标准进行评估，被认为值得支持。

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.