Proprioceptive signals from peripheral mechanoreceptors form the basis for bodily perception and are known to be essential for motor control. However we still have an incomplete understanding of how proprioception differs between joints, whether it differs among the various degrees-of-freedom (DoFs) within a particular joint, and how such differences affect motor control and learning. We here i...

The health care system needs to face new and advanced medical technologies that can improve the patients' quality of life by replacing lost or decreased functions. In stroke patients, the disabilities that follow cerebral lesions may impair the mandatory daily activities of an independent life. These activities are dependent mostly on the patient's upper limb function so that they can carry out...

Wearable robotic systems are being developed to prevent injury to the low back. Designing a wearable robotic system is challenging because it is difficult to predict how the exoskeleton will affect the movement of the wearer. To aid the design of exoskeletons, we formulate and numerically solve an optimal control problem (OCP) to predict the movements and forces of a person as they lift a 15 kg...

Specialized mechanical connection between exoskeleton and underlying muscles in arthropods is a complex network of interconnected matrix constituents, junctions and associated cytoskeletal elements, which provides prominent mechanical attachment of the epidermis to the cuticle and transmits muscle tensions to the exoskeleton. This linkage involves anchoring of the complex extracellular matrix c...

“I will never forget the emotion of my first steps [...],” Françoise, first user during initial trials of the exoskeleton ATALANTE [1] discussed in this paper. “I am tall again!”, Sandy, the fourth user after standing up in the exoskeleton. In these early tests, complete paraplegic patients have dynamically walked up to 10 m without crutches or other assistance using a feedback control method o...

Ever since human ancestors picked up rocks and used them as tools, technology has enhanced human capabilities. Over the last decades more and more research has been done in trying to enhance strength and endurance by means of an exoskeleton. Reducing the metabolic cost of human walking using lower extremity exoskeletons is one of the challenges that has been taken on by several research groups....

This article presents a multi-objective design optimization strategy to determine an optimal of digital hydraulically driven knee exoskeleton. To satisfy the overall goal compact and lightweight design, four key objectives are defined. Via genetic algorithm based technique, pareto-optimal set designs is determined trade-offs between analysed. decisions on component availability user-comfort, di...

Gait phase detection is of great significance in the field motion analysis and exoskeleton-assisted walking, can realize accurate control exoskeleton robots. Therefore, order to obtain gait information ensure good accuracy, a recognition framework based on New Hidden Markov Model (NHMM) proposed improve accuracy detection. A multi-sensor data acquisition system was developed used collect traini...

The design of a robotic exoskeleton often focuses on replicating the kinematics of the human limb that it is connected to. However, human joint kinematics is so complex that in practice, the kinematics of artificial exoskeletons fails to reproduce it exactly. This discrepancy results in hyperstaticity. Namely, uncontrolled interaction forces appear. In this paper, we investigate the problem of ...

The American lobster (Homarus americanus) displays a diverse set of locomotory behaviours that includes tail flips, walking and paddling. Paddling is carried out by the four pairs of paddle-shaped pleopods on the ventral abdomen. Although it is recognized that pleopod-generated fluid flows have some locomotory role in adults, reports on their relative importance in locomotion are inconsistent. ...