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A Novel User Control for Lower Extremity Rehabilitation Exoskeletons

Lower extremity exoskeletons offer the potential to restore ambulation to individuals with paraplegia due to spinal cord injury. However, they often rely on preprogrammed gait, initiated by switches, sensors, and/or EEG triggers. Users can exercise only limited independent control over the trajector...

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Autores principales: Karunakaran, Kiran K., Abbruzzese, Kevin, Androwis, Ghaith, Foulds, Richard A.
Formato: Online Artículo Texto
Lenguaje:English
Publicado: Frontiers Media S.A. 2020
Materias:
Acceso en línea:https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC7805763/
https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pubmed/33501275
http://dx.doi.org/10.3389/frobt.2020.00108
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author Karunakaran, Kiran K.
Abbruzzese, Kevin
Androwis, Ghaith
Foulds, Richard A.
author_facet Karunakaran, Kiran K.
Abbruzzese, Kevin
Androwis, Ghaith
Foulds, Richard A.
author_sort Karunakaran, Kiran K.
collection PubMed
description Lower extremity exoskeletons offer the potential to restore ambulation to individuals with paraplegia due to spinal cord injury. However, they often rely on preprogrammed gait, initiated by switches, sensors, and/or EEG triggers. Users can exercise only limited independent control over the trajectory of the feet, the speed of walking, and the placement of feet to avoid obstacles. In this paper, we introduce and evaluate a novel approach that naturally decodes a neuromuscular surrogate for a user's neutrally planned foot control, uses the exoskeleton's motors to move the user's legs in real-time, and provides sensory feedback to the user allowing real-time sensation and path correction resulting in gait similar to biological ambulation. Users express their desired gait by applying Cartesian forces via their hands to rigid trekking poles that are connected to the exoskeleton feet through multi-axis force sensors. Using admittance control, the forces applied by the hands are converted into desired foot positions, every 10 milliseconds (ms), to which the exoskeleton is moved by its motors. As the trekking poles reflect the resulting foot movement, users receive sensory feedback of foot kinematics and ground contact that allows on-the-fly force corrections to maintain the desired foot behavior. We present preliminary results showing that our novel control can allow users to produce biologically similar exoskeleton gait.
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spelling pubmed-78057632021-01-25 A Novel User Control for Lower Extremity Rehabilitation Exoskeletons Karunakaran, Kiran K. Abbruzzese, Kevin Androwis, Ghaith Foulds, Richard A. Front Robot AI Robotics and AI Lower extremity exoskeletons offer the potential to restore ambulation to individuals with paraplegia due to spinal cord injury. However, they often rely on preprogrammed gait, initiated by switches, sensors, and/or EEG triggers. Users can exercise only limited independent control over the trajectory of the feet, the speed of walking, and the placement of feet to avoid obstacles. In this paper, we introduce and evaluate a novel approach that naturally decodes a neuromuscular surrogate for a user's neutrally planned foot control, uses the exoskeleton's motors to move the user's legs in real-time, and provides sensory feedback to the user allowing real-time sensation and path correction resulting in gait similar to biological ambulation. Users express their desired gait by applying Cartesian forces via their hands to rigid trekking poles that are connected to the exoskeleton feet through multi-axis force sensors. Using admittance control, the forces applied by the hands are converted into desired foot positions, every 10 milliseconds (ms), to which the exoskeleton is moved by its motors. As the trekking poles reflect the resulting foot movement, users receive sensory feedback of foot kinematics and ground contact that allows on-the-fly force corrections to maintain the desired foot behavior. We present preliminary results showing that our novel control can allow users to produce biologically similar exoskeleton gait. Frontiers Media S.A. 2020-09-08 /pmc/articles/PMC7805763/ /pubmed/33501275 http://dx.doi.org/10.3389/frobt.2020.00108 Text en Copyright © 2020 Karunakaran, Abbruzzese, Androwis and Foulds. http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by/4.0/ This is an open-access article distributed under the terms of the Creative Commons Attribution License (CC BY). The use, distribution or reproduction in other forums is permitted, provided the original author(s) and the copyright owner(s) are credited and that the original publication in this journal is cited, in accordance with accepted academic practice. No use, distribution or reproduction is permitted which does not comply with these terms.
spellingShingle Robotics and AI
Karunakaran, Kiran K.
Abbruzzese, Kevin
Androwis, Ghaith
Foulds, Richard A.
A Novel User Control for Lower Extremity Rehabilitation Exoskeletons
title A Novel User Control for Lower Extremity Rehabilitation Exoskeletons
title_full A Novel User Control for Lower Extremity Rehabilitation Exoskeletons
title_fullStr A Novel User Control for Lower Extremity Rehabilitation Exoskeletons
title_full_unstemmed A Novel User Control for Lower Extremity Rehabilitation Exoskeletons
title_short A Novel User Control for Lower Extremity Rehabilitation Exoskeletons
title_sort novel user control for lower extremity rehabilitation exoskeletons
topic Robotics and AI
url https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC7805763/
https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pubmed/33501275
http://dx.doi.org/10.3389/frobt.2020.00108
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