A leap forward in artificial intelligence control from Georgia Tech engineers could one day make robotic assistance for everyday activities as easy as putting on a pair of pants.Researchers have developed a task-agnostic controller for robotic exoskeletons that’s capable of assisting users with all kinds of leg movements, including ones the AI has never seen before.It’s the first controller able to support a dozens of realistic human lower limb movements, including dynamic actions like lunging and jumping, as well as more typical unstructured movements like starting and stopping, twisting, and meandering.Paired with a slimmed down exoskeleton integrated into a pair of athletic pants that was designed by X, “The Moonshot Factory,” the system requires no calibration or training. Users can put on the device, activate the controller, and go.The study was led by researchers in the <a href="https://me.gatech.edu/">George W. Woodruff School of Mechanical Engineering</a> (ME) and the Georgia Tech <a href="https://research.gatech.edu/robotics">Institute for Robotics and Intelligent Machines</a>.Their system takes a first big step toward devices that could help people navigate the real world, not just the controlled environment of a lab. That could mean helping airline baggage handlers move hundreds of suitcases or factory workers with heavy, labor-intensive tasks. It could also mean improving mobility for older adults or stroke patients who can’t get around as well as they used to.“The idea is to provide real human augmentation across the high diversity of tasks that people do in their everyday lives, and that could be for clinical applications, industrial applications, recreation, or the military,” said <a href="https://me.gatech.edu/faculty/young">Aaron Young</a>, ME associate professor and the <a href="https://www.epic.gatech.edu/">senior researcher</a> on a <a href="https://doi.org/10.1038/s41586-024-08157-7">study describing the controller published Nov. 13 in the journal Nature</a>.What made it possible for the controller to accurately boost hip and knee joint movements was a whole new approach to the data that feeds the machine learning algorithms.Instead of predicting the task the user is trying to do — say, climbing stairs or lifting a heavy object — the researchers used sensors to instantaneously detect and estimate the human user’s internal joint efforts. That allowed the hip and knee exoskeleton device in the study to provide a 15% to 20% boost to those joints, making it easier for users to do those activities.“What's so cool about the system is, you put it on and now it's part of you. It's adapting to you. It's moving with you. There's no dependency on exactly what you're doing for the exoskeleton,” said Dean Molinaro, a lead author of the <a href="https://doi.org/10.1038/s41586-024-08157-7">Nature study</a> and a former robotics Ph.D. student. “This was kind of a big swing to say, we're willing to not only take a different crack at how we approach exoskeleton control, but also to bank on machine learning as that translator. All the pieces that had to align to realize this type of task-agnostic control felt like a bunch of tiny miracles.”<img src="https://s3-us-west-1.amazonaws.com/wevolver-project-images/froala%2F1731548452881-Exoskeleton-AI-Controller-Keaton-Scherpereel-Aaron-Young-Dean-Molinaro-Ethan-Schonhaut-9142-v.webp" style="width: 100%px;" class="fr-fic fr-dib">The research team included, left to right, Keaton Scherpereel, Associate Professor Aaron Young, Dean Molinaro, and Ethan Schonhaut.The controller described in Nature builds on previous work where the team <a href="https://coe.gatech.edu/news/2024/03/universal-controller-could-push-robotic-prostheses-exoskeletons-real-world-use">created a unified exoskeleton controller that could support walking, standing, and climbing stairs or ramps without user intervention.</a>Their new controller expands far beyond those activities and was able to offer seamless assistance across the range of natural human movement, including the transient and sometimes halting motions common in daily life. It also generalized, meaning it worked for activities that weren’t part of the data used to train the algorithms.<iframe width="640" height="360" src="https://www.youtube.com/embed/UVfo__lCNfo?&amp;wmode=opaque&amp;rel=0&amp;enablejsapi=1&amp;origin=https://www.wevolver.com" frameborder="0" allowfullscreen="" class="fr-draggable" data-lf-form-tracking-inspected-kn9eq4roawkarlvp="true" data-lf-yt-playback-inspected-kn9eq4roawkarlvp="true" data-lf-vimeo-playback-inspected-kn9eq4roawkarlvp="true"></iframe>The team collected data on 28 different tasks. They included climbing stairs and ramps, running, walking backwards, jumping up or across, squatting, lifting and placing a weight, turning and twisting, tug-of-war, and calisthenics.Even with the added weight of the exoskeleton, users expended less energy, and their joints didn’t have to work as hard on most of the tasks the researchers tested. On the few activities with no measurable benefit from the exo, users still experienced significant compensation for the extra weight of wearing the device.Most work on exoskeleton devices has focused on a single joint. Devices for both the hip and knee typically are slow and show little metabolic benefit. Using biological data from the joints as the key driver overcomes those limitations.“Coordinating two joints, and being able to augment both simultaneously, is something engineers have struggled with because of the codependency on the joints,” Young said. “That's a beautiful part of our strategy that relies on internal human states: you can then coordinate the two joints naturally and rather effortlessly. That's huge from an engineering standpoint.”The exoskeleton involved in the group’s trials also is new. Instead of a bulky, robotic device worn on top of a user’s clothes, the device was integrated into a pair of athletic pants. It was designed by <a href="https://x.company/">X, "The Moonshot Factory,"</a> an initiative formerly known as Google X that aims to invent radical technologies to solve big problems. X helped fund the research and worked with Young’s team to create the “clothing-integrated” exoskeleton.Work on the “exo-pants” idea continues at <a href="https://www.skipwithjoy.com/">Skip, a company spun out of X</a> and where the study’s other lead author, Keaton Scherpereel, is now an exoskeleton control engineer. The idea is to move this kind of robotic assistance — in terms of both function and ease of use — toward the real world. Slipping on a pair of pants that can support the whole range of daily movement would be far more practical than the reality today.Next steps include finding ways to incorporate other physiological data that could further improve the controller and adapting the controller for different devices.“We’ve proved this approach works really well, but it requires a lot of data,” said Scherpereel, also a former robotics Ph.D. student. “What happens when we have a different exoskeleton, change the design of the exoskeleton, or move sensors? We want to handle those changes in a way that allows us to take advantage of the data we’ve already collected.”Along with Molinaro, Scherpereel, and Young, the research team included Ph.D. student Ethan Schonhaut, Georgios Evangelopoulos at Google, and <a href="https://bouve.northeastern.edu/directory/max-shepherd/">Max Shepherd</a> at Northeastern University.“This is the floor of how good we can do and still the very early phases of these kinds of controllers,” Young said. “Now that we have these amazing deep learning algorithms and this fundamental idea of using the internal human state, the capabilities are pretty endless for where this technology can go.”<img src="https://s3-us-west-1.amazonaws.com/wevolver-project-images/froala%2F1731548500304-Exoskeleton-AI-Controller-Pants-9137-v.webp" style="width: 100%px;" class="fr-fic fr-dib">The prototype robotic exoskeleton use in the research was integrated into a pair of athletic pants. X, The Moonshot Factory, worked with Young’s team to create the “clothing-integrated” exoskeleton and helped fund the team's AI controller research.<hr><h3 id="isPasted">About the Research<a title="Permalink to this item" href="https://coe.gatech.edu/news/2024/11/no-matter-task-new-exoskeleton-ai-controller-can-handle-it#about-the-research"></a></h3>This research was supported by X, The Moonshot Factory, Georgia Tech’s Partnership for an Advanced Computing Environment (PACE), and the U.S. National Science Foundation, grant Nos. 2233164 and 1830215. Any opinions, findings, and conclusions or recommendations expressed in this material are those of the authors and do not necessarily reflect the views of any funding agency.CITATION:&nbsp;Molinaro, D.D., Scherpereel, K.L., Schonhaut, E.B. et al. Task-agnostic exoskeleton control via biological joint moment estimation. Nature (2024).&nbsp;<a href="https://doi.org/10.1038/s41586-024-08157-7">https://doi.org/10.1038/s41586-024-08157-7</a>

A new exoskeleton controller developed by Georgia Tech engineers works for dozens of dozens of realistic human lower limb movements, including dynamic actions like tug-of-war and jumping, as well as more typical unstructured movements like starting and stopping, twisting, and meandering. Photos & Video: Candler Hobbs

Researchers created a deep learning-driven controller that helps users in real-world tasks, even those it wasn’t trained for.

No Matter the Task, This New Exoskeleton AI Controller Can Handle It

A patient recovering from a limb amputation won’t use a prostheses that isn’t comfortable. A person rehabbing from a stroke won’t use a robotic exoskeleton if the mobility it grants doesn't allow them to perform everyday activities. And a diabetes patient won’t use an insulin pump that doesn’t deliver the appropriate dosage of medicine to control their blood sugar.<img src="https://s3-us-west-1.amazonaws.com/wevolver-project-images/froala%2F1729896386001-IMG_8127_0_0.jpg" style="width: 100%px;" class="fr-fic fr-dib">Human-in-the-loop optimization algorithms could greatly improve human-robot interaction with medical devices like this exosuit, dramatically improving the results for patients. (Harvard Biodesign Lab)All of these challenges fall under a concept known as “human-robot interaction,” a critical issue in robotic design and engineering. A new perspective from researchers at the <a href="https://seas.harvard.edu/">Harvard John A. Paulson School of Engineering and Applied Sciences</a> (SEAS) delves into a potential approach to improve human-robot interaction. The approach, known as “human-in-the-loop optimization” (HILO), explores the potential of combining individual patient data with machine learning algorithms as a way to fine-tune robotic design and improve results for specific performance metrics. Patrick Slade, Assistant Professor of Bioengineering at SEAS, was first author on the perspective, which was published in Nature.“I hope this perspective can accelerate the development and effectiveness of human-robot interactions when developing robotic systems, especially for medical applications where these systems interact with people,” Slade said. “I’m hopeful that this perspective will encourage researchers to think about humans as complex, challenging systems to design for. HILO can be a tool to maximize the effectiveness of devices that interact with people.”The idea of human-in-the-loop optimization has been around for about 7 years, Slade said, but has yet to be fully adopted into the robotic engineering space. Because every human is different, human-robot interaction is a very difficult concept to predict and design for, which can slow down innovation in the field.“Working with these populations and devices for a while, I’ve seen that when people are introduced to a new device, their conceptions of the device, what they want and how they might use it, change as they get used to it,” he said. “It’s a moving target with dual challenges, where you need them to understand and adapt with the device, and you also want to provide them with something that provides a benefit to the user and is acceptable for regular use. HILO can help inform what the human-robot interaction should be to improve whatever human-robot metric is important to that population. Knowing what effective human-robot interaction is needed, for example, what torque to provide with an ankle exoskeleton to help people post-stroke to walk more quickly and efficiently, can inform the development of effective devices. HILO can also maximize performance of an existing commercial device by systematically tuning how that device interacts with the user. We’ve seen an optimized assistance double the benefits compared to a generic controller for an ankle exoskeleton device, showing HILO can have a big impact on patient outcomes without even changing the device hardware."<blockquote>One challenge in the field of robotics is that people often get treated as robots.Patrick Slade, Assistant Professor of Bioengineering at SEAS</blockquote>Though called an optimization algorithm, Slade described it as closer to a “personalization” algorithm, in that it uses personal data to optimize the device to the individual patient. And because it’s based on machine learning algorithms, the optimal adjustments can be found quickly and without an engineer needing to pour through multiple potential designs.“One challenge in the field of robotics is that people often get treated as robots,” Slade said. “People are complex and often don’t respond to robotic assistance in a predictable way. This paper is posing the idea that a lot of our research intuitions on human-robot interaction aren’t great because people are very complex. If we admit that, we can use this systematic approach to optimize assistance and really accelerate the field. Adopting HILO would really accelerate the field, and patients would see more benefits.”Slade envisions HILO as especially valuable in the earliest design stages, when research is still being done in labs as opposed to field testing finished or nearly finished designs. During those early stages, engineers typically test out numerous different designs and functions to try to hone in on one that meets whatever they determine to be the most important performance metrics. Examples of metrics in medical devices, for example, include muscle contraction,fatigue, walking speed, heart rate, blood glucose levels, or other measures of improved mobility.Using HILO algorithms, designers could quickly determine if a design needs to be adjusted based on individual patient data to maximize its benefit.“HILO allows you to identify the meaningful interactions, then build a portable device based on what you’ve learned,” he said. “Rather than building multiple interactions of a portable device, you could do it in a single shot, which could help accelerate the field.”Conversely, Slade’s perspective suggests even late-stage design or products already on the market could still benefit from these optimization algorithms. HILO is similar to getting a glasses prescription, systematically tuning the human-robot interaction to achieve a desired outcome, similar to a new prescription.“You have a device, you optimize the controller, and now you have a more personalized controller and see better benefits,” he said. “We’ve seen from a few studies that existing portable devices can double their performance if you apply HILO. It’s the same hardware – you just update the controller, and all of a sudden your device is twice as effective. That’s exciting. You could spend years developing something, and then all of a sudden double the performance just by systematically tuning the human-robot interaction.”

Human-in-the-loop optimization algorithms could greatly improve human-robot interaction with medical devices like this exosuit, dramatically improving the results for patients. (Harvard Biodesign Lab)

New research touts effectiveness of individual optimization algorithms

Keeping humans in the loop of robotic design

In this episode, we explore the versatile knee exoskeleton designed to enhance safety during lifting by using a novel design that improves the freedom of movement and safety in comparison to current state of the art.

Podcast: Wear This Exoskeleton & Save Your Knees!

This article was discussed in our <a href="https://www.wevolver.com/profile/the.next.byte" rel="noopener noreferrer" target="_blank">Next Byte podcast</a>.&nbsp;<iframe height="200px" width="100%" frameborder="no" scrolling="no" seamless="" src="https://player.simplecast.com/3ddb6ef3-e0b1-4983-87ca-84cf2ed8fe2e?dark=false" class="fr-draggable" data-lf-form-tracking-inspected-kn9eq4roawkarlvp="true" data-lf-yt-playback-inspected-kn9eq4roawkarlvp="true" data-lf-vimeo-playback-inspected-kn9eq4roawkarlvp="true"></iframe> The full article will continue below.<hr>A set of knee exoskeletons, built with commercially available knee braces and drone motors at the University of Michigan, has been shown to help counteract fatigue in lifting and carrying tasks. They helped users maintain better lifting posture even when tired, a key factor in defending against on-the-job injuries, the researchers say.“Rather than directly bracing the back and giving up on proper lifting form, we strengthen the legs to maintain it,” said <a href="https://gregg.engin.umich.edu/" target="_blank" rel="noreferrer noopener">Robert Gregg</a>, U-M associate professor of robotics and corresponding author of the study in Science Robotics. “This differs from what’s more commonly done in industry.”Already workers who lift regularly, such as in construction and manufacturing, may use back braces. Back exoskeletons, which use springs or motors to help with lifting, are an emerging technology. But devices supporting the back assume unsafe lifting, or stooping, and back exoskeletons tend to be cumbersome devices that must be deactivated to allow motions that aren’t part of the lifting task, Gregg said.The Michigan team says their knee exoskeletons are the first to support the quadriceps muscles instead, which provide the bulk of the force in safe squat lifting, as a less intrusive way to help protect workers from back injuries. Study participants tested them out with lifting and carrying tasks using a 20 lb kettlebell.The tasks included lifting the weight off the ground and setting it down again, and lifting and carrying the weight on flat ground, up and down an incline, and up and down stairs. The study found that, after becoming fatigued, the participants kept better posture with the help of the exoskeleton, and they also lifted faster—just 1% slower than their pre-fatigued paces, versus 44% slower without the aid of the exoskeletons.&nbsp;“This is especially important when a worker has to keep up with a conveyor belt. Usually, when a worker is fatigued, they’ll keep up with that rate, but with a compromised posture. They’ll bend their back more, and that’s when injuries are most likely,” said Nikhil Divekar, a postdoctoral research fellow in robotics at U-M and first author of the study.&nbsp;The participants felt the benefit, too—they mainly said they were quite or very satisfied, with the exception of walking on level ground, for which they were more or less satisfied. This tracks with the small amount of assistance required by the quadriceps during this relatively easy task; Gregg described it as just enough support to counteract the weight of the exoskeleton.<img src="https://images.wevolver.com/eyJidWNrZXQiOiJ3ZXZvbHZlci1wcm9qZWN0LWltYWdlcyIsImtleSI6ImZyb2FsYS8xNzI3MzkzMDMxNzk5LWtuZWUtZXhvcy12ZXJ0aWNhbC5qcGciLCJlZGl0cyI6eyJyZXNpemUiOnsid2lkdGgiOjk1MCwiZml0IjoiY292ZXIifX19" style="width: 100%px;" class="fr-fic fr-dib">Emily Keller, a doctoral student in robotics at the Locomotor Control Systems Lab, University of Michigan, demonstrates the knee exoskeletons on the steps outside of the Ford Robotics Building at U-M. Photo: José Montes-Pérez, Robotics, University of MichiganOne of the keys to making the exoskeleton so wearable is the motors and the way that they are geared, which enables users to swing their knees freely for a natural gait. The other is the software, which predicts what kind of assistance the user needs by measuring the angle of the knee joint, the orientations of the thigh and lower leg, and the force picked up by a sensor in the user’s shoe.&nbsp;With these three measurements from both legs, it’s possible to work out what motion the user is trying to do, and how much assistance to give. These measurements were taken 150 times per second, enabling the exos to move seamlessly between activities.&nbsp;This approach is in contrast to many exo controllers, which follow predefined patterns for a limited set of tasks. Switching tasks can be a problem for these controllers, and they may need a full second to figure out what the user is trying to do, Gregg said.“If your exo is trying to walk upstairs, and you’re trying to walk downstairs, that could be a problem, right?” he said.The new controller also pairs a physics model with machine learning, which prevents the exoskeleton from making unexpected moves if the user begins behaving differently than any activity included in the controller’s training data.The lab prototypes cost about $4,000 per pair, so Gregg anticipates that if the exoskeletons were produced at scale, they might cost about $2,000 per pair.The 10 study participants, five women and five men, did all the tasks on two different days, one day fresh and the other fatigued. To induce fatigue, each participant performed a series of squat lifts with the kettlebell until they couldn’t continue without a long break between repetitions. All participants had experience with proper squat lifting techniques.&nbsp;The study was funded by the National Institutes of Health.The team has applied for patent protection with the assistance of U-M Innovation Partnerships and is seeking partners to bring the technology to market.Gray Thomas, Avani Yerva and Hannah Frame contributed to the study.Gregg is also an associate professor of electrical and computer engineering and mechanical engineering.

Helping out the quad muscles kept study participants lifting safely despite fatigue, with an algorithm that smoothly shifts between lifting and carrying tasks.

Versatile knee exo for safer lifting

In this episode, we explore an innovative prosthesis driven by the nervous system that helps people with amputations walk naturally and discover how this cutting-edge technology is transforming mobility and enhancing the quality of life for amputees by restoring a natural gait.

Podcast: Bionics Help Amputees Take Big Strides Forward

This article was discussed in our <a href="https://www.wevolver.com/profile/the.next.byte" rel="noopener noreferrer" target="_blank">Next Byte podcast</a>.&nbsp;<iframe height="200px" width="100%" frameborder="no" scrolling="no" seamless="" src="https://player.simplecast.com/ceb16e69-0075-4e23-97b8-f679ee5b172e?dark=false" class="fr-draggable" data-gtm-yt-inspected-24="true" data-lf-form-tracking-inspected-kn9eq4roawkarlvp="true" data-lf-yt-playback-inspected-kn9eq4roawkarlvp="true" data-lf-vimeo-playback-inspected-kn9eq4roawkarlvp="true"></iframe> The full article will continue below.<hr>State-of-the-art prosthetic limbs can help people with amputations achieve a natural walking gait, but they don’t give the user full neural control over the limb. Instead, they rely on robotic sensors and controllers that move the limb using predefined gait algorithms.Using a new type of surgical intervention and neuroprosthetic interface, MIT researchers, in collaboration with colleagues from Brigham and Women’s Hospital, have shown that a natural walking gait is achievable using a prosthetic leg fully driven by the body’s own nervous system. The surgical amputation procedure reconnects muscles in the residual limb, which allows patients to receive “proprioceptive” feedback about where their prosthetic limb is in space.In a study of seven patients who had this surgery, the MIT team found that they were able to walk faster, avoid obstacles, and climb stairs much more naturally than people with a traditional amputation.<iframe width="640" height="360" src="https://www.youtube.com/embed/fKdnu50Nx-8?&amp;wmode=opaque&amp;rel=0&amp;enablejsapi=1&amp;origin=https://www.wevolver.com" frameborder="0" allowfullscreen="" class="fr-draggable" data-lf-form-tracking-inspected-kn9eq4roawkarlvp="true" data-lf-yt-playback-inspected-kn9eq4roawkarlvp="true" data-lf-vimeo-playback-inspected-kn9eq4roawkarlvp="true" data-gtm-yt-inspected-24="true" id="651131305" title="Helping people with amputation walk naturally">&nbsp;</iframe>“This is the first prosthetic study in history that shows a leg prosthesis under full neural modulation, where a biomimetic gait emerges.&nbsp;No one has been able to show this level of brain control that produces a natural gait, where the human’s nervous system is controlling the movement, not a robotic control algorithm,” says Hugh Herr,&nbsp;a professor of media arts and sciences, co-director of the K. Lisa Yang Center for Bionics at MIT, an associate member of MIT’s McGovern Institute for Brain Research, and the senior author of the new study.Patients also experienced less pain and less muscle atrophy following this surgery, which is known as the agonist-antagonist myoneural interface (AMI). So far, about 60 patients around the world have received this type of surgery, which can also be done for people with arm amputations.Hyungeun Song, a postdoc in MIT’s Media Lab, is the lead author of the <a href="https://www.nature.com/articles/s41591-024-02994-9" target="_blank">paper</a>, which appears today in Nature Medicine.<h2>Sensory feedback</h2>Most limb movement is controlled by pairs of muscles that take turns stretching and contracting. During a traditional below-the-knee amputation, the interactions of these paired muscles are disrupted. This makes it very difficult for the nervous system to sense the position of a muscle and how fast it’s contracting — sensory information that is critical for the brain to decide how to move the limb.People with this kind of amputation may have trouble controlling their prosthetic limb because they can’t accurately sense where the limb is in space. Instead, they rely on robotic controllers built into the prosthetic limb. These limbs also include sensors that can detect and adjust to slopes and obstacles.To try to help people achieve a natural gait under full nervous system control, Herr and his colleagues began developing the AMI surgery several years ago. Instead of severing natural agonist-antagonist muscle interactions, they connect the two ends of the muscles so that they still dynamically communicate with each other within the residual limb. This surgery can be done during a primary amputation, or the muscles can be reconnected after the initial amputation as part of a revision procedure.“With the AMI amputation procedure, to the greatest extent possible, we attempt to connect native agonists to native antagonists in a physiological way so that after amputation, a person can move their full phantom limb with physiologic levels of proprioception and range of movement,” Herr says.In a 2021 <a href="https://news.mit.edu/2021/surgery-control-prosthetic-limbs-0215" target="_blank">study</a>, Herr’s lab found that patients who had this surgery were able to more precisely control the muscles of their amputated limb, and that those muscles produced electrical signals similar to those from their intact limb.After those encouraging results, the researchers set out to explore whether those electrical signals could generate commands for a prosthetic limb and at the same time give the user feedback about the limb’s position in space. The person wearing the prosthetic limb could then use that proprioceptive feedback to volitionally adjust their gait as needed.In the new Nature Medicine study, the MIT team found this sensory feedback did indeed translate into a smooth, near-natural ability to walk and navigate obstacles.“Because of the AMI neuroprosthetic interface, we were able to boost that neural signaling, preserving as much as we could. This was able to restore a person's neural capability to continuously and directly control the full gait, across different walking speeds, stairs, slopes, even going over obstacles,” Song says.<h2>A natural gait</h2>For this study, the researchers compared seven people who had the AMI surgery with seven who had traditional below-the-knee amputations. All of the subjects used the same type of bionic limb: a prosthesis with a powered ankle as well as electrodes that can sense electromyography (EMG) signals from the tibialis anterior the gastrocnemius muscles. These signals are fed into a robotic controller that helps the prosthesis calculate how much to bend the ankle, how much torque to apply, or how much power to deliver.The researchers tested the subjects in several different situations: level-ground walking across a 10-meter pathway, walking up a slope, walking down a ramp, walking up and down stairs, and walking on a level surface while avoiding obstacles.In all of these tasks, the people with the AMI neuroprosthetic interface were able to walk faster — at about the same rate as people without amputations — and navigate around obstacles more easily. They also showed more natural movements, such as pointing the toes of the prosthesis upward while going up stairs or stepping over an obstacle, and they were better able to coordinate the movements of their prosthetic limb and their intact limb. They were also able to push off the ground with the same amount of force as someone without an amputation.“With the AMI cohort, we saw natural biomimetic behaviors emerge,” Herr says.&nbsp;“The cohort that didn’t have the AMI, they were able to walk, but the prosthetic movements weren’t natural, and their movements were generally slower.”These natural behaviors emerged even though the amount of sensory feedback provided by the AMI was less than 20 percent of what would normally be received in people without an amputation.“One of the main findings here is that a small increase in neural feedback from your amputated limb can restore significant bionic neural controllability, to a point where you allow people to directly neurally control the speed of walking, adapt to different terrain, and avoid obstacles,” Song says.“This work represents yet another step in us demonstrating what is possible in terms of restoring function in patients who suffer from severe limb injury. It is through collaborative efforts such as this that we are able to make transformational progress in patient care,” says Matthew Carty, a surgeon at Brigham and Women’s Hospital and associate professor at Harvard Medical School, who is also an author of the paper.Enabling neural control by the person using the limb is a step toward Herr’s lab’s goal of “rebuilding human bodies,” rather than having people rely on ever more sophisticated robotic controllers and sensors — tools that are powerful but do not feel like part of the user’s body.“The problem with that long-term approach is that the user would never feel embodied with their prosthesis. They would never view the prosthesis as part of their body, part of self,” Herr says. “The approach we’re taking is trying to comprehensively connect the brain of the human to the electromechanics.”The research was funded by the MIT K. Lisa Yang Center for Bionics and the Eunice Kennedy Shriver National Institute of Child Health and Human Development.<img src="https://images.wevolver.com/eyJidWNrZXQiOiJ3ZXZvbHZlci1wcm9qZWN0LWltYWdlcyIsImtleSI6ImZyb2FsYS8xNzIwNDIzMTQxODg1LV9NR185NjE2LTMuanBnIiwiZWRpdHMiOnsicmVzaXplIjp7IndpZHRoIjo5NTAsImZpdCI6ImNvdmVyIn19fQ==" style="width: 100%px;" class="fr-fic fr-dib">Credit: Jimmy Day, MIT Media Lab

“This is the first prosthetic study in history that shows a leg prosthesis under full neural modulation,” Hugh Herr says. Image: Courtesy of Hugh Herr and Hyungeun Song

A new surgical procedure gives people more neural feedback from their residual limb. With it, seven patients walked more naturally and navigated obstacles.

A prosthesis driven by the nervous system helps people with amputation walk naturally

In this episode, we discuss how MIT researchers are making great strides in developing better robotic hands by focusing on an often overlooked component: the palm.

Podcast: Talk to The Hand: Meet The Robots With a Human Touch

In this episode, we discuss a breakthrough from ETH Zurich to mimic natural foot signals to the brain using state of the art neuroprosthetics. 

Podcast: Neuroprosthetics: The Next Step Towards Limb Reconstruction

Robotic exoskeletons designed to help humans with walking or physically demanding work have been the stuff of sci-fi lore for decades. Remember <a href="https://youtu.be/jtVygtT8VIc" target="_blank">Ellen Ripley in that Power Loader in Alien</a>? Or the crazy mobile platform <a href="https://youtu.be/Z2OLmFw9wR8?si=hIsWKAiRYAWGWbpP&t=85" target="_blank">George McFly wore in 2015 in Back to the Future, Part II</a> because he threw his back out?Researchers are working on real-life robotic assistance that could protect workers from painful injuries and help stroke patients regain their mobility. So far, they have required extensive calibration and context-specific tuning, which keeps them largely limited to research labs.Mechanical engineers at Georgia Tech may be on the verge of changing that, allowing exoskeleton technology to be deployed in homes, workplaces, and more.A team of researchers in <a href="https://me.gatech.edu/faculty/young" target="_blank">Aaron Young’s</a> lab have developed a universal approach to controlling robotic exoskeletons that requires no training, no calibration, and no adjustments to complicated algorithms. Instead, users can don the “exo” and go.Their system uses a kind of artificial intelligence called deep learning to autonomously adjust how the exoskeleton provides assistance, and they’ve shown it works seamlessly to support walking, standing, and climbing stairs or ramps. <a href="https://doi.org/10.1126/scirobotics.adi8852" target="_blank">They described their “unified control framework” March 20 in Science Robotics.</a>“The goal was not just to provide control across different activities, but to create a single unified system. You don't have to press buttons to switch between modes or have some classifier algorithm that tries to predict that you're climbing stairs or walking,” said Young, associate professor in the <a href="https://me.gatech.edu/" target="_blank">George W. Woodruff School of Mechanical Engineering</a>.<h3>Machine Learning as Translator</h3><img src="https://s3-us-west-1.amazonaws.com/wevolver-project-images/froala%2F1711697656575-_MG_8945.webp" style="width: 100%px;" class="fr-fic fr-dib">A closeup view of experimental exoskeleton used in experiments that resulted in a universal controller for robotic assistance devices.Most previous work in this area has focused on one activity at a time, like walking on level ground or up a set of stairs. The algorithms involved typically try to classify the environment to provide the right assistance to users.The Georgia Tech team threw that out the window. Instead of focusing on the environment, they focused on the human — what’s happening with muscles and joints — which meant the specific activity didn’t matter.“We stopped trying to bucket human movement into what we call discretized modes — like level ground walking or climbing stairs&nbsp;— because real movement is a lot messier,” said Dean Molinaro, lead author on the study and a recently graduated Ph.D. student in Young’s lab. “Instead, we based our controller on the user’s underlying physiology. What the body is doing at any point in time will tell us everything we need to know about the environment. Then we used machine learning essentially as the translator between what the sensors are measuring on the exoskeleton and what torques the muscles are generating.”With the controller delivering assistance through a hip exoskeleton developed by the team, they found they could reduce users’ metabolic and biomechanical effort: they expended less energy, and their joints didn’t have to work as hard compared to not wearing the device at all.In other words, wearing the exoskeleton was a benefit to users, even with the extra weight added by the device itself.<blockquote>What’s so cool about this [controller] is that it adjusts to each person’s internal dynamics without any tuning or heuristic adjustments, which is a huge difference from a lot of work in the field. There’s no subject-specific tuning or changing parameters to make it work.AARON YOUNG Associate Professor, Mechanical Engineering</blockquote><a href="https://doi.org/10.1126/scirobotics.adi8852" target="_blank">The control system in this study</a> is designed for partial-assist devices. These exoskeletons support movement rather than completely replacing the effort.The team, which also included Molinaro and <a href="https://www.meche.engineering.cmu.edu/directory/bios/kang-inseung.html" target="_blank">Inseung Kang</a>, another former Ph.D. student now at Carnegie Mellon University, used an existing algorithm and trained it on mountains of force and motion-capture data they collected in Young’s lab. Subjects of different genders and body types wore the powered hip exoskeleton and walked at varying speeds on force plates, climbed height-adjustable stairs, walked up and down ramps, and transitioned between those movements.And like the motion-capture studios used to make movies, every movement was recorded and cataloged to understand what joints were doing for each activity.The <a href="https://doi.org/10.1126/scirobotics.adi8852" target="_blank">Science Robotics study</a> is “application agnostic,” as Young put it. Yet their controller offers the first bridge to real-world viability for robotic exoskeleton devices.<img src="https://s3-us-west-1.amazonaws.com/wevolver-project-images/froala%2F1711697699313-_MG_8771.webp" style="width: 100%px;" class="fr-fic fr-dib">Researchers Aaron Young, left, and Dean Molinaro.Imagine how robotic assistance could benefit soldiers, airline baggage handlers, or any workers doing physically demanding jobs where musculoskeletal injury risk is high.Assistive robotics also could help stroke patients regain mobility. Related experiments in Young’s lab are working to understand how their hip exoskeleton and unified controller could be extended to help people recovering from stroke navigate their communities.<iframe width="640" height="360" src="https://www.youtube.com/embed/VEvV1jnqacs?&amp;wmode=opaque&amp;rel=0&amp;enablejsapi=1&amp;origin=https://www.wevolver.com" frameborder="0" allowfullscreen="" class="fr-draggable" data-lf-form-tracking-inspected-kn9eq4roawkarlvp="true" data-lf-yt-playback-inspected-kn9eq4roawkarlvp="true" data-lf-vimeo-playback-inspected-kn9eq4roawkarlvp="true"></iframe><h3 id="isPasted">Helping Amputees Do More</h3>Other projects in Young’s <a href="https://www.epic.gatech.edu/" target="_blank">Exoskeleton and Prosthetic Intelligent Controls (EPIC) Lab</a> are marrying the power of robotics and AI to help adults with above-the-knee amputations navigate more effectively and children recover from neurological injuries.For adults, the lab is imagining new powered prostheses to help them navigate the world. An active study is exploring how AI can learn a patient’s gait and adapt over time to improve walking.Stacey Rice has been working with the team for a year, testing iterations of a leg prosthesis and the accompanying AI controller. She lost her leg to bone cancer 44 years ago, so she’s already seen technology improve the devices available to amputees.&nbsp;The Atlanta native is a multisport athlete and 1988 volleyball Paralympian. She said she can feel a real difference in the amount of effort she expends using the robotic assistance. <blockquote>I realized while I was on the treadmill that I wasn’t using as much energy as if I was using my own prosthesis. For me to have that energy bank is huge. There’s so much energy the body uses when you’re an amputee and you’re walking. To reserve that energy for your day-to-day activities will allow amputees to be more active during the day and do more.STACEY RICE Amputee and Research Study Participant</blockquote><img src="https://s3-us-west-1.amazonaws.com/wevolver-project-images/froala%2F1711697760246-_MG_8899.webp" style="width: 100%px;" class="fr-fic fr-dib">Dean Molinaro walks up a height-adjustable ramp, left, and similarly adjustable stairs, right, while wearing an experimental exoskeleton. The team used these and other unique tools Young's lab, such as force plates and motion-capture cameras, to collect data in their effort to develop a unified control framework for robotic assistance devices.<h3 id="isPasted">Gamifying Pediatric Rehab<a title="Permalink to this item" href="https://coe.gatech.edu/news/2024/03/universal-controller-could-push-robotic-prostheses-exoskeletons-real-world-use#gamifying-pediatric-rehab" target="_blank"></a></h3>In other experiments, Young’s lab is working with Children’s Healthcare of Atlanta and Shriners Hospital to incorporate robotics into a new approach to pediatric rehabilitation that helps patients improve their gait.&nbsp;Kids with cerebral palsy, traumatic brain injuries, and other conditions often undergo physical therapy to help correct walking abnormalities. Incorporating robotics into the process is an area Young is excited about because developing brains are especially good at relearning skills and can recover function over time.“The robotic therapy does what a physical therapist might do manually, but in an automated way. It encourages them to adopt better gait biomechanics,” Young said.In each appointment, the researchers combine a robotic exoskeleton with biofeedback systems through a game-like interface.“When the patients come in, it’s like a video game that they're playing, which both engages them and gives them feedback about their performance,” Young said. “We want them to internalize the learning. The exoskeleton will help them physically achieve their goals, but we need them to retain that and engage in the rehab process.”<h3>Regaining Balance<a title="Permalink to this item" href="https://coe.gatech.edu/news/2024/03/universal-controller-could-push-robotic-prostheses-exoskeletons-real-world-use#regaining-balance" target="_blank"></a></h3>Elsewhere in the lab, Young and his team use a unique virtual-reality treadmill system to study gait and balance, particularly for older adults or people with mobility issues from strokes or amputations.The team uses the platform to introduce significant disruptions while participants are walking, challenging them to keep or regain their balance. The resulting data —&nbsp;largely from young, athletic individuals —&nbsp;is inspiring how wearable robots should operate to help people with balance impairments stay upright.In other words, it’s a busy place. And all in service of making a future of wearable robotics a reality.“For a lot of us, mobility is something we’re able to take for granted. One of the hopes is that this work can translate to people with mobility impairments and improve their quality of life,” Molinaro said. “And also, there are times when mobility is a limitation. So we’re interested in how we push the edge of mobility, both in restoring it for those with impairments but also augmenting it for those of able body to make them even more capable.”

Researcher Aaron Young makes adjustments to an experimental exoskeleton worn by then-Ph.D. student Dean Molinaro. The team used the exoskeleton to develop a unified control framework for robotic assistance devices that would allow users to put on an "exo" and go — no extensive training, tuning, or calibration required. (Photo: Candler Hobbs)

Aaron Young’s team has developed a wear-and-go approach that requires no calibration or training.

Universal Controller Could Push Robotic Prostheses, Exoskeletons Into Real-World Use

This article was discussed in our <a href="https://www.wevolver.com/profile/the.next.byte" rel="noopener noreferrer" target="_blank">Next Byte podcast</a>.&nbsp;<iframe height="200px" width="100%" frameborder="no" scrolling="no" seamless="" src="https://player.simplecast.com/b5ad041a-a5dc-42cd-900b-390dca184186?dark=false" class="fr-draggable" data-lf-form-tracking-inspected-kn9eq4roawkarlvp="true" data-lf-yt-playback-inspected-kn9eq4roawkarlvp="true" data-lf-vimeo-playback-inspected-kn9eq4roawkarlvp="true"></iframe> The full article will continue below.<hr>A few years ago, a team of researchers working under Professor Stanisa Raspopovic at the ETH Zurich Neuroengineering Lab gained worldwide attention when they announced that their prosthetic legs had enabled amputees to feel sensations from this artificial body part for the first time. Unlike commercial leg prostheses, which simply provide amputees with stability and support, the ETH researchers’ prosthetic device was connected to the sciatic nerve in the test subjects’ thigh via implanted electrodes.This electrical connection enabled the neuroprosthesis to communicate with the patient’s brain, for example relaying information on the constant changes in pressure detected on the sole of the prosthetic foot when walking. This gave the test subjects greater confidence in their prosthesis – and it enabled them to walk considerably faster on challenging terrains. “Our experimental leg prosthesis succeeded in evoking natural sensations. That’s something current neuroprostheses are mainly unable to do; instead, they mostly evoke artificial, unpleasant sensations,” Raspopovic says.This is probably because today’s neuroprosthetics are using time-constant electrical pulses to stimulate the nervous system. “That’s not only unnatural, but also inefficient,” Raspopovic says. In a recently published paper, he and his team used the example of their leg prostheses to highlight the benefits of using naturally inspired, biomimetic stimulation to develop the next generation of neuroprosthetics.<h2>Model simulates activation of nerves in the sole</h2>To generate these biomimetic signals, Natalija Katic – a doctoral student in Raspopovic’s research group – developed a computer model called FootSim. It is based on data collected by collaborators in Canada, who recorded the activity of natural receptors, named mechanoreceptors, in the sole of the foot while touching different points on the feet of volunteers with a vibrating rod.The model simulates the dynamic behaviour of large numbers of mechanoreceptors in the sole of the foot and generates the neural signals that shoot up the nerves in the leg towards the brain – from the moment the heel strikes the ground and the weight of the body starts to shift forward to the outside of the foot until the toes push off the ground ready for the next step. “Thanks to this model, we can see how semsory receptors from the sole, and the connected nerves, behave during walking or running, which is experimentally impossible to measure” Katic says.<img src="https://images.wevolver.com/eyJidWNrZXQiOiJ3ZXZvbHZlci1wcm9qZWN0LWltYWdlcyIsImtleSI6ImZyb2FsYS8xNzA5ODI0NDc4NjY1LWltYWdlLmltYWdlZm9ybWF0LjEyODYuNDg4NzEzNzM4LmpwZyIsImVkaXRzIjp7InJlc2l6ZSI6eyJ3aWR0aCI6OTUwLCJmaXQiOiJjb3ZlciJ9fX0=" style="width: 100%px;" class="fr-fic fr-dib">Restoring natural sensory feedback results in functional and cognitive benefits for leg prosthesis users. (Photograph: Pietro Comaschi)Restoring natural sensory feedback results in functional and cognitive benefits for leg prosthesis users.&nbsp;(Photograph: Pietro Comaschi)<h2 id="isPasted">Information overload in the spinal cord</h2>&nbsp; &nbsp; &nbsp; &nbsp; &nbsp; &nbsp; &nbsp; &nbsp; &nbsp; &nbsp; &nbsp; &nbsp; &nbsp; &nbsp; &nbsp; &nbsp; &nbsp; &nbsp; &nbsp; &nbsp; &nbsp; &nbsp; &nbsp; &nbsp;&nbsp;To assess how closely the biomimetic signals calculated by the model correspond to the signals emitted by real neurons, Giacomo Valle – a postdoc in Raspopovic’s research group – worked with colleagues in Germany, Serbia and Russia on experiments with cats, whose nervous system processes movement in a similar way to that of humans. The experiments took place in 2019 at the Pavlov Institute of Physiology in St. Petersburg and were carried out in accordance with the relevant European Union guidelines.The researchers implanted electrodes, connecting some to the nerve in the leg and some to the spinal cord to discover how the signals are transmitted through the nervous system. When the researchers applied pressure to the bottom of the cat’s paw, thereby evoking the natural neural response that occurs when a cat takes a step, the peculiar pattern of activity recorded in the spinal cord did indeed resemble the patterns that were elicited in the spinal cord when the researchers stimulated the leg nerve with biomimetic signals.By contrast, the conventional approach of time-constant stimulation of the sciatic nerve in the cat’s thigh elicited a markedly different pattern of activation in the spinal cord. “This clearly shows that the commonly used stimulation methods cause the neural networks in the spine to be flooded with information,” Valle says. “This information overload could be the reason for the unpleasant sensations or paraesthesia reported by some users of neuroprosthetics,” Raspopovic adds.<h2>Learning the language of the nervous system</h2>In their clinical trial with leg amputees, the researchers were able to show that biomimetic stimulation is superior to time-constant stimulation. Their work clearly demonstrated how the signals that mimicked nature produced better results: not only were the test subjects able to climb steps faster, they also made fewer mistakes in a task that required them to climb the same steps while spelling words backwards. “Biomimetic neurostimulation allows subjects to concentrate on other things while walking,” Raspopovic says, “so we concluded that this type of stimulation is more naturally processed and less taxing on the brain.”Raspopovic, whose lab forms part of the ETH Institute of Robotics and Intelligent Systems, believes that these new findings are not only relevant to the limb prostheses he and his team have been working on for over half a decade. He argues that the need to move away from unnatural, time-constant stimulation towards biomimetic signals also applies to a whole series of other aids and devices, including spinal implants and electrodes for brain stimulation. “We need to learn the language of the nervous system,” Raspopovic says. “Then we’ll be able to communicate with the brain in ways it really understands.”<h2>Information overload in the spinal cord</h2>To assess how closely the biomimetic signals calculated by the model correspond to the signals emitted by real neurons, Giacomo Valle – a postdoc in Raspopovic’s research group – worked with colleagues in Germany, Serbia and Russia on experiments with cats, whose nervous system processes movement in a similar way to that of humans. The experiments took place in 2019 at the Pavlov Institute of Physiology in St. Petersburg and were carried out in accordance with the relevant European Union guidelines.The researchers implanted electrodes, connecting some to the nerve in the leg and some to the spinal cord to discover how the signals are transmitted through the nervous system. When the researchers applied pressure to the bottom of the cat’s paw, thereby evoking the natural neural response that occurs when a cat takes a step, the peculiar pattern of activity recorded in the spinal cord did indeed resemble the patterns that were elicited in the spinal cord when the researchers stimulated the leg nerve with biomimetic signals.By contrast, the conventional approach of time-constant stimulation of the sciatic nerve in the cat’s thigh elicited a markedly different pattern of activation in the spinal cord. “This clearly shows that the commonly used stimulation methods cause the neural networks in the spine to be flooded with information,” Valle says. “This information overload could be the reason for the unpleasant sensations or paraesthesia reported by some users of neuroprosthetics,” Raspopovic adds.<h2>Learning the language of the nervous system</h2>In their clinical trial with leg amputees, the researchers were able to show that biomimetic stimulation is superior to time-constant stimulation. Their work clearly demonstrated how the signals that mimicked nature produced better results: not only were the test subjects able to climb steps faster, they also made fewer mistakes in a task that required them to climb the same steps while spelling words backwards. “Biomimetic neurostimulation allows subjects to concentrate on other things while walking,” Raspopovic says, “so we concluded that this type of stimulation is more naturally processed and less taxing on the brain.”Raspopovic, whose lab forms part of the ETH Institute of Robotics and Intelligent Systems, believes that these new findings are not only relevant to the limb prostheses he and his team have been working on for over half a decade. He argues that the need to move away from unnatural, time-constant stimulation towards biomimetic signals also applies to a whole series of other aids and devices, including spinal implants and electrodes for brain stimulation. “We need to learn the language of the nervous system,” Raspopovic says. “Then we’ll be able to communicate with the brain in ways it really understands.”<hr><h2 id="isPasted">Reference</h2>&nbsp; &nbsp; &nbsp; &nbsp; &nbsp; &nbsp; &nbsp; &nbsp; &nbsp; &nbsp; &nbsp; &nbsp; &nbsp; &nbsp; &nbsp; &nbsp; &nbsp; &nbsp; &nbsp; &nbsp; &nbsp; &nbsp; &nbsp; &nbsp;&nbsp;Valle G, Katic Secerovic N, Eggemann D, Gorskii O, Pavlova N, Petrini FM, Cvancara P, Stieglitz T, Musienko P, Bumbasirevic M, Raspopovic S: Biomimetic computer-to-brain communication enhancing naturalistic touch sensations via peripheral nerve stimulation. Nature Communications, 20 February 2024, doi: <a href="https://doi.org/10.1038/s41467-024-45190-6" target="_blank">external page10.1038/s41467-024-45190-6</a>

ETH researchers have developed a prosthetic leg that communicates with the brain via natural signals. (Photograph: Keystone)

Prostheses that connect to the nervous system have been available for several years. Now, researchers at ETH Zurich have found evidence that neuroprosthetics work better when they use signals that are inspired by nature.

Bio-inspired neuroprosthetics: sending signals the brain can understand

Somanity’s story began three years ago when three friends were having a drink. Since he’d been diagnosed with multiple sclerosis, Sébastien had been confined to a wheelchair. “The only way for me to walk again someday would be to have an exoskeleton,” he told his friend Mathieu Merian. The problem: Exoskeletons are expensive — very expensive. Having one would cost €150,000 to €250,000. Mathieu is 19 years old. He has just dropped his university electrical engineering track to join the Global BBA program at SKEMA Business School. Plus, he is head of My3D, a company specialized in 3D printing.&nbsp;He has that youthful insolence that has no fear of dizzying challenges, and the naivete to want to make the world a better place. Thus, he got a slightly crazy idea: create the first 3D-printed exoskeleton to allow anyone with a motor disability to once again walk, run, climb stairs and more. In brief, to live normally again and regain full bodily control, all for less than €10,000 out of pocket.The thought could have wafted away in the air, like most ideas launched under the influence, but it culminated in the creation of a new company: Somanity. Three years later, the startup has attracted investors, has its first functional prototype and plans to market its exoskeleton by the end of 2025. Make no mistake: Mathieu Merian has all the expertise and determination needed to turn his ideas into reality.<h2>The challenge: design an affordable, desirable exoskeleton.</h2>Somanity’s calling is simple. Launch a new exoskeleton prototype that allows anyone with a motor disability to walk again, for a price between €10,000 and €20,000.&nbsp;Driven by the desire to reduce all costs in the medical field, Somanity seeks to reduce the price of an exoskeleton to one-tenth by focusing on 3D printing. But its ambitions don’t stop there — the startup also wants to make its exoskeletons as appealing as the latest smartphone.“We’ve done workshops with APF France Handicap to find out what the people involved want from their exoskeleton. One man with a motor disability told us,&nbsp;‘I want an exoskeleton that makes people wish they were disabled.’&nbsp;That’s what we’re attempting to do with a medical device that doesn’t look like one,”, says Mathieu Merian, founder and CEO of Somanity. Specifically, this translates into an ergonomic, modern design for an exoskeleton available in several colors, with a futuristic, decidedly technological look. “3D printing allows us to do things that you can’t normally do at the design level, or at least to act quickly in the design process,” Merian says.<h2>Exoskeleton motorization delivered in record time</h2>The first prototypes rolled out in June 2023. Somanity then began looking for a motorization partner. “I benchmarked the various motors available, and I ran across a document from maxon devoted to motors for exoskeletons. So I contacted the company,” Merian recalls. If maxon didn’t have a standard product to offer within 48 hours, it was still good timing for Somanity, because maxon Switzerland’s medical business unit had just created a concept for an exoskeleton: an assembly called “Exoskeleton Drive” made up of an EC90 Flat motor, a reducer, an encoder and an electronic card, all integrated.“In less than 15 days, we were able to deliver this all-in-one device dedicated to exoskeletons right to Somanity. This concept device integrates enough performances to allow the structures at the start of the project to characterize their needs more precisely,” explains Virginie Mialane-Lacroix, medical market manager maxon France. The startup could then count on maxon technical support to best integrate this product.<img src="https://images.wevolver.com/eyJidWNrZXQiOiJ3ZXZvbHZlci1wcm9qZWN0LWltYWdlcyIsImtleSI6ImZyb2FsYS8xNzA5Nzk3MzA5NzA1LVNLRU1BLU1haGlldS1NZXJpYW4tTG9yYS1CYXJyYS1QaG90b2dyYXBoeS00Ny5qcGciLCJlZGl0cyI6eyJyZXNpemUiOnsid2lkdGgiOjk1MCwiZml0IjoiY292ZXIifX19" style="width: 100%px;" class="fr-fic fr-dib">The Exoskeleton prototype. © Lora Barra – SKEMA Business School for Somanity<h3>Tight time to market and clarity about the market</h3>“maxon products are very well documented, and we’ve benefited from excellent technical support — so good that in less than a month the first motor was implemented. Before the end of August we ordered the remaining motors to implement all the legs and at the beginning of January we integrated the motor to make the last degree of hip opening,” says the Somanity CEO.“The first six months of this collaboration were ultra high-performance. We are used to working with other startups, but it’s rare for one to have that level of maturity at this stage of the project. Somanity is characterized by its determination and very clear identification of the need, and the means to go along with that need,” Virginie Mialane willingly confides. The startup is, in fact, aware that the product currently offered by maxon isn’t optimal yet, but they know that improvements can be made later. And Virginie Mialane-Lacroix continues: “It sets them apart that they accept the current limits while still focusing on what is essential. That means coming up with a working demo within the time and budget allotted.”&nbsp;<img src="https://images.wevolver.com/eyJidWNrZXQiOiJ3ZXZvbHZlci1wcm9qZWN0LWltYWdlcyIsImtleSI6ImZyb2FsYS8xNzEwMTU2NTk1NjE2LVByb2pla3QtNTMyMC0xLjM4LmpwZyIsImVkaXRzIjp7InJlc2l6ZSI6eyJ3aWR0aCI6OTUwLCJmaXQiOiJjb3ZlciJ9fX0=" style="width: 769px;" class="fr-fic fr-dib">The maxon Exoskeleton Drive. Image credit: maxonFor its part, Somanity is delighted to have a partner that understands the responsiveness challenges of a startup. “Being able to make a phone call, transfer some money and have the motor a week later is priceless. Having engineers who listen, who answer our questions and guide our technical choices, is too,” Merian confirms.Once the mechanical part was validated, Somanity could finalize their design. As of now — February 2024 — Somanity has a final prototype. Sébastien, Mathieu’s friend who has a motor disability, will be able to start the first tests in March.<img src="https://images.wevolver.com/eyJidWNrZXQiOiJ3ZXZvbHZlci1wcm9qZWN0LWltYWdlcyIsImtleSI6ImZyb2FsYS8xNzA5Nzk3Mzk2OTMyLVNLRU1BLU1haGlldS1NZXJpYW4tTG9yYS1CYXJyYS1QaG90b2dyYXBoeS0xMC5qcGciLCJlZGl0cyI6eyJyZXNpemUiOnsid2lkdGgiOjk1MCwiZml0IjoiY292ZXIifX19" style="width: 100%px;" class="fr-fic fr-dib">The exoskeleton combines various materials and technologies to achieve its goal of comfort and useability. © Lora Barra – SKEMA Business School for Somanity&nbsp;<h2>From medical to space: Somanity exoskeletons are looking far ahead</h2>To respond to their time-to-market challenges, Somanity has chosen to bring out the first version of their exoskeleton as a Class 1 medical device. A second, more powerful version, with enriched functionalities and onboard technologies, can then come out later as a Class IIA medical device.&nbsp;But Somanity exoskeletons aren’t limited to the medical field! “We have a partnership with the European Space Agency (ESA) to make exoskeletons for generating gravity. The objective is to make the body think it is in Earth’s gravity while maintaining the freedom of zero gravity in an international space station,” Somanity’s CEO explains. The purpose? To limit the loss of muscle mass and bone density while saving astronauts long hours spent exercising.<img src="https://images.wevolver.com/eyJidWNrZXQiOiJ3ZXZvbHZlci1wcm9qZWN0LWltYWdlcyIsImtleSI6ImZyb2FsYS8xNzEwMTU2NTAyODM1LTA2LTEyLTIwMTggMTMtMTctNDkuanBnIiwiZWRpdHMiOnsicmVzaXplIjp7IndpZHRoIjo5NTAsImZpdCI6ImNvdmVyIn19fQ==" style="width: 769px;" class="fr-fic fr-dib">The maxon Exoskeleton Drive Image credit: maxon<h3>HMI and IA: exciting future developments</h3>Currently, an exoskeleton’s human-machine interface (HMI) is reduced to a screen and a joystick. Ultimately, Somanity intends to offer an HMI similar to that of screens in cars, with a display of the environment, the possibility of updating its exoskeleton, access to real-time data, and more. “The final goal is always the user’s comfort. Ultimately, when the technology is operational, we’ll also have cerebral control,” the CEO says. By 2028, Somanity also intends to integrate an empathetic assistant into its exoskeleton, to prevent users from suffering mentally and to compensate for the shortage of health professionals. “With these AI-based technologies, it is becoming possible to ease the work of caregivers while improving patients’ lives,” says Merian.<img src="https://images.wevolver.com/eyJidWNrZXQiOiJ3ZXZvbHZlci1wcm9qZWN0LWltYWdlcyIsImtleSI6ImZyb2FsYS8xNzA5Nzk3NTIyMjcxLVNLRU1BLU1haGlldS1NZXJpYW4tTG9yYS1CYXJyYS1QaG90b2dyYXBoeS0zNS5qcGciLCJlZGl0cyI6eyJyZXNpemUiOnsid2lkdGgiOjk1MCwiZml0IjoiY292ZXIifX19" style="width: 100%px;" class="fr-fic fr-dib">The HMI of the exoskeleton will continue to be refined. © Lora Barra – SKEMA Business School for SomanityIn addition to freedom of movement, the exoskeleton has the advantage of allowing a person previously seated in a wheelchair to assume an upright position, at the height of people they’re speaking to, looking directly into their eyes and no longer at the height of a child. “Sometimes people speak to my friend as if he’s mentally disabled because he is in a chair. Being in an upright position allows people to overcome a psychological barrier!,” the Somanity CEO assures. “In addition to the psychological impact, there is a physical and psychomotor effect: use of exoskeletons combats the secondary effects of the seated position,” adds Virginie Mialane-Lacroix, medical market manager maxon France.<img src="https://images.wevolver.com/eyJidWNrZXQiOiJ3ZXZvbHZlci1wcm9qZWN0LWltYWdlcyIsImtleSI6ImZyb2FsYS8xNzEwMTU2NTQ0NzQ0LTA2LTEyLTIwMTggMTMtMjEtMjUuanBnIiwiZWRpdHMiOnsicmVzaXplIjp7IndpZHRoIjo5NTAsImZpdCI6ImNvdmVyIn19fQ==" style="width: 769px;" class="fr-fic fr-dib">The maxon Exoskeleton Drive Image credit: maxon<h2>Fundraising in progress</h2>Innovations by people for people — these words sum up Somanity’s whole philosophy. To achieve its goals, the startup seeks to raise €2 million to €4 million in 2024. These funds would especially allow them to position themselves on the American market. “We’re looking for investors ready to assist us, because we’re aware that fundraising will come with its share of changes at the team level,” the CEO says. The startup therefore hopes to find investors aligned with the human dimension of its project, especially able to help it with medical validations and with drafting SMQs.Are we heading toward an ultramodern future where disabled people will be envied for their high-tech exoskeletons? “A lot of people think it's great that we’re developing exoskeletons. But it’s also really sad, because the reason we have to do it is that our living spaces are not adapted to people in wheelchairs. To be honest, I look forward to a day when I’ll stop selling exoskeletons because an operation will put people on their feet again. When that day comes, I won’t be the least bit sad to be made obsolete,” explains Mathieu Merian, CEO of Somanity.Find out more: <a href="http://www.somanity.com" target="_blank">www.somanity.com</a>&nbsp;

Somanity aims to revolutionize mobility for individuals with motor disabilities by developing an affordable 3D-printed exoskeleton.

Somanity: Exoskeletons by people for people

A robot mimics the folded look of rose petals to grasp complex shapes more easily than a traditional hand. A pneumatic clamp makes it easier for people with motor disabilities to safely wield kitchen knives. Prostheses utilize shape memory polymers to better replicate the range of motion of a limb.All three of these concepts fall under the category of “soft robotics,” a field that uses strings, magnets, air, water and other non-rigid elements to design robotic solutions for biomechanical or industrial challenges.The Soft Robotics Toolkit (SRT), developed by the&nbsp;<a href="http://biodesign.seas.harvard.edu/" target="_blank">Harvard Biodesign Lab</a> at the&nbsp;<a href="https://seas.harvard.edu/" target="_blank">Harvard John A. Paulson School of Engineering and Applied Sciences</a> (SEAS), aims to provide a platform for designers, researchers and students to share information and resources in the field. Led by Conor Walsh, Paul A. Maeder Professor of Engineering and Applied Sciences at SEAS, the group recently resumed the SRT Competition, which challenged teams to design, fabricate and present their soft robotic innovations. The competition ran annually from 2015-18, then returned as a virtual showcase this year.“We have a new team at the SRT, and with that team comes new excitement and eagerness to continue to provide useful and engaging content to our audience,” said Jesse Grupper, a mechanical engineering research fellow in the Harvard Biodesign Lab and member of the&nbsp;<a href="https://softroboticstoolkit.com/" target="_blank">SRT team</a>. “We want to continue to benefit our SRT community and felt like now was the time to show that we are still committed and want to continue to see growth in the field.”Thirty-five teams from around the world competed in Open, College and High School categories of the SRT Competition. Projects were judged based on innovation, implementation, and documentation, with cash prizes awarded to the top designs in each category.“Sharing these novel projects on our site garners the interest of other researchers, encourages beginners in the field to join the community, and excites members to continue to contribute their own projects,” Grupper said. “Overall, the SRT Competition enables more people to become involved with the community which further pushes the boundaries of the field as a whole.”<iframe width="640" height="360" src="https://www.youtube.com/embed/E1wAI09LaoY?&amp;wmode=opaque&amp;rel=0&amp;enablejsapi=1&amp;origin=https://www.wevolver.com" frameborder="0" allowfullscreen="" class="fr-draggable" data-lf-form-tracking-inspected-kn9eq4roawkarlvp="true" data-lf-yt-playback-inspected-kn9eq4roawkarlvp="true" data-lf-vimeo-playback-inspected-kn9eq4roawkarlvp="true"></iframe>ROSE: Torsional Robotic Soft Gripper (Japan Advanced Institute of Science and Technology )First place in the Open category went to ROSE, a torsional soft robotic gripper designed at the Japan Advanced Institute of Science and Technology. The funnel-shaped gripper folds around and encompasses objects, enabling the soft membrane to grasp and hold complex, small or slippery objects. The Open runner-up prize went to a team from Northeastern University, which designed a series of pneumatically actuated origami robots that can support the weight of a human being.<iframe width="640" height="360" src="https://www.youtube.com/embed/H6yJK9ToCL8?&amp;wmode=opaque&amp;rel=0&amp;enablejsapi=1&amp;origin=https://www.wevolver.com" frameborder="0" allowfullscreen="" class="fr-draggable" data-lf-form-tracking-inspected-kn9eq4roawkarlvp="true" data-lf-yt-playback-inspected-kn9eq4roawkarlvp="true" data-lf-vimeo-playback-inspected-kn9eq4roawkarlvp="true"></iframe>Dual-Mode Soft Robotics for Enhancing Kitchen Independence for Fine Motor Disabilities (Barker College in Hornsby, Australia)In the College category, a team from Barker College in Australia designed a pair of soft grippers for use in the kitchen. When actuated, the devices hold or clamp vegetables in place, making it easier for a person with motor challenges to chop or cut them. Runner-up went to a soft robotic hand designed at the University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign.<iframe width="640" height="360" src="https://www.youtube.com/embed/3nRMOhhcFqM?&amp;wmode=opaque&amp;rel=0&amp;enablejsapi=1&amp;origin=https://www.wevolver.com" frameborder="0" allowfullscreen="" class="fr-draggable" data-lf-form-tracking-inspected-kn9eq4roawkarlvp="true" data-lf-yt-playback-inspected-kn9eq4roawkarlvp="true" data-lf-vimeo-playback-inspected-kn9eq4roawkarlvp="true"></iframe>4D Prosthetic (Quarry Lane School)A team from Quarry Lane School in California won the High School category with its 4D Prosthetic. The device uses shape memory polymers to simulate complex motions such as fingers gripping an object. The polymers hold their shape until exposed to heat such as a hot water bath, at which point they can be reshaped into a new position.“The SRT Team has undergone a lot of changes in the last five years,” Grupper said. “While our staff has shifted, and some of our objectives have changed, we've always been dedicated to expanding the field, and fostering an inclusive space for those that want to join our community.”

A robot mimics the folded look of rose petals to grasp complex shapes more easily than a traditional hand. A pneumatic clamp makes it easier for people with motor disabilities to safely wield kitchen knives. Prostheses utilize shape memory polymers to better replicate the range of motion of a limb.

A world of soft robotics

In this episode, we talk about how a soft robotic exoskeleton from Harvard and Boston University is allowing patients suffering from Parkinson’s Disease to get their independence back by being able to walk safely without extra assistance.

Podcast: Exoskeleton To Help Parkinson's Patients Walk

This article was discussed in our <a href="https://www.wevolver.com/profile/the.next.byte" rel="noopener noreferrer" target="_blank">Next Byte podcast</a>.&nbsp;<iframe height="200px" width="100%" frameborder="no" scrolling="no" seamless="" src="https://player.simplecast.com/c7a0deb3-ad50-40fa-8df2-1273193fb185?dark=false" class="fr-draggable" data-gtm-yt-inspected-9="true" data-lf-form-tracking-inspected-kn9eq4roawkarlvp="true" data-lf-yt-playback-inspected-kn9eq4roawkarlvp="true" data-lf-vimeo-playback-inspected-kn9eq4roawkarlvp="true"></iframe> The full article will continue below.<hr> <iframe width="640" height="360" src="https://www.youtube.com/embed/pAWrypkeDXM?&amp;wmode=opaque&amp;enablejsapi=1&amp;origin=https://www.wevolver.com" frameborder="0" allowfullscreen="" class="fr-draggable" data-lf-form-tracking-inspected-kn9eq4roawkarlvp="true" data-lf-yt-playback-inspected-kn9eq4roawkarlvp="true" data-lf-vimeo-playback-inspected-kn9eq4roawkarlvp="true" data-gtm-yt-inspected-9="true" id="72780686" title="Soft robotic device improves walking for individual with Parkinson’s disease">&nbsp;&nbsp;</iframe>Freezing is one of the most common and debilitating symptoms of Parkinson’s disease, a neurodegenerative disorder that affects more than 9 million people worldwide. When individuals with Parkinson’s disease freeze, they suddenly lose the ability to move their feet, often mid-stride, resulting in a series of staccato stutter steps that get shorter until the person stops altogether. These episodes are one of the biggest contributors to falls among people living with Parkinson’s disease.&nbsp;Today, freezing is treated with a range of pharmacological, surgical or behavioral therapies, none of which are particularly effective.&nbsp;What if there was a way to stop freezing altogether?Researchers from the <a href="https://seas.harvard.edu/" target="_blank">Harvard John A. Paulson School of Engineering and Applied Sciences&nbsp;</a>(SEAS) and the <a href="https://www.bu.edu/sargent/" target="_blank">Boston University Sargent College of Health &amp; Rehabilitation Sciences</a> have used a soft, wearable robot to help a person living with Parkinson’s walk without freezing. The robotic garment, worn around the hips and thighs, gives a gentle push to the hips as the leg swings, helping the patient achieve a longer stride.&nbsp;The device completely eliminated the participant’s freezing while walking indoors, allowing them to walk faster and further than they could without the garment’s help.&nbsp;“We found that just a small amount of mechanical assistance from our soft robotic apparel delivered instantaneous effects and consistently improved walking across a range of conditions for the individual in our study,” said <a href="https://seas.harvard.edu/person/conor-walsh" target="_blank">Conor Walsh</a>, the Paul A. Maeder Professor of Engineering and Applied Sciences at SEAS and co-corresponding author of the study.&nbsp;The research demonstrates the potential of soft robotics to treat this frustrating and potentially dangerous symptom of Parkinson’s disease and could allow people living with the disease to regain not only their mobility but their independence.&nbsp;The research is published in <a href="https://www.nature.com/articles/s41591-023-02731-8" target="_blank">Nature Medicine.&nbsp;</a>For over a decade, Walsh’s<a href="https://biodesign.seas.harvard.edu/" target="_blank">&nbsp;Biodesign Lab&nbsp;</a>at SEAS has been developing assistive and rehabilitative robotic technologies to improve mobility for individuals’ post-stroke and those living with ALS or other diseases that impact mobility. Some of that technology, specifically an exosuit for post-stroke gait retraining, received support from the <a href="https://wyss.harvard.edu/" target="_blank">Wyss Institute for Biologically Inspired Engineering</a>, and was licensed and commercialized by <a href="https://rewalk.com/restore-exo-suit/" target="_blank">ReWalk Robotics</a>.In 2022, SEAS and Sargent College received a grant from the <a href="https://innovation.masstech.org/news/baker-polito-administration-awards-harvard-and-boston-university-3-million-assistive-robotics" target="_blank">Massachusetts Technology Collaborative</a><a href="https://masstech.org/" target="_blank">&nbsp;</a>to support the development and translation of next-generation robotics and wearable technologies. The research is centered at the <a href="https://www.movelab.seas.harvard.edu/" target="_blank">Move Lab</a>, whose mission is to support advances in human performance enhancement with the collaborative space, funding, R&amp;D infrastructure, and experience necessary to turn promising research into mature technologies that can be translated through collaboration with industry partners.This research emerged from that partnership.“Leveraging soft wearable robots to prevent freezing of gait in patients with Parkinson’s required a collaboration between engineers, rehabilitation scientists, physical therapists, biomechanists and apparel designers,” said Walsh, whose team collaborated closely with that of Terry Ellis, &nbsp;Professor and Physical Therapy Department Chair and Director of the <a href="https://www.bu.edu/neurorehab/" target="_blank">Center for Neurorehabilitation at Boston University.&nbsp;</a><blockquote>Leveraging soft wearable robots to prevent freezing of gait in patients with Parkinson’s required a collaboration between engineers, rehabilitation scientists, physical therapists, biomechanists and apparel designers.CONOR WALSHPAUL A. MAEDER PROFESSOR OF ENGINEERING AND APPLIED SCIENCES</blockquote>The team spent six months working with a 73-year-old man with Parkinson’s disease, who — despite using both surgical and pharmacologic treatments — endured substantial and incapacitating freezing episodes more than 10 times a day, causing him to fall frequently. These episodes prevented him from walking around his community and forced him to rely on a scooter to get around outside.&nbsp;In previous research, Walsh and his team leveraged human-in-the-loop optimization to demonstrate that a soft, wearable device could be used to augment hip flexion and assist in swinging the leg forward to provide an efficient approach to reduce energy expenditure during walking in healthy individuals. &nbsp;Here, the researchers used the same approach but to address freezing. The wearable device uses cable-driven actuators and sensors worn around the waist and thighs. Using motion data collected by the sensors, algorithms estimate the phase of the gait and generate assistive forces in tandem with muscle movement.The effect was instantaneous. Without any special training, the patient was able to walk without any freezing indoors and with only occasional episodes outdoors. He was also able to walk and talk without freezing, a rarity without the device.&nbsp;“Our team was really excited to see the impact of the technology on the participant’s walking,” said Jinsoo Kim, former PhD student at SEAS and co-lead author on the study.&nbsp;During the study visits, the participant told researchers: “The suit helps me take longer steps and when it is not active, I notice I drag my feet much more. It has really helped me, and I feel it is a positive step forward. It could help me to walk longer and maintain the quality of my life.”&nbsp;“Our study participants who volunteer their time are real partners,” said Walsh. “Because mobility is difficult, it was a real challenge for this individual to even come into the lab, but we benefited so much from his perspective and feedback.”&nbsp;The device could also be used to better understand the mechanisms of gait freezing, which is poorly understood.&nbsp;“Because we don’t really understand freezing, we don’t really know why this approach works so well,” said Ellis. “But this work suggests the potential benefits of a ’bottom-up’ rather than ’top-down’ solution to treating gait freezing. We see that restoring almost-normal biomechanics alters the peripheral dynamics of gait and may influence the central processing of gait control.”The research was co-authored by Jinsoo Kim, Franchino Porciuncula, Hee Doo Yang, Nicholas Wendel, Teresa Baker and Andrew Chin. Asa Eckert-Erdheim and Dorothy Orzel also contributed to the design of the technology, as well as Ada Huang, and Sarah Sullivan managed the clinical research. It was supported by the National Science Foundation under grant CMMI-1925085; the National Institutes of Health under grant NIH U01 TR002775; and the Massachusetts Technology Collaborative, Collaborative Research and Development Matching Grant.

Robotic exosuit eliminated gait freezing, a common and highly debilitating symptom

Soft robotic, wearable device improves walking for individual with Parkinson's disease

This article originally appeared in <a href="https://news.engin.umich.edu/2023/10/choosing-exoskeleton-settings-like-a-pandora-radio-station/" target="_blank" rel="noopener noreferrer">Michigan Engineering</a> and has been republished with permission.<hr>Taking inspiration from music streaming services, a team of engineers at the University of Michigan, Google and Georgia Tech has designed the simplest way for users to program their own exoskeleton assistance settings.Of course, what’s simple for the users is more complex underneath, as a machine learning algorithm repeatedly offers pairs of assistance profiles that are most likely to be comfortable for the wearer. The user then selects one of these two, and the predictor offers another assistance profile that it believes might be better. This approach enables users to set the exoskeleton assistance based on their preferences using a very simple interface, conducive to implementing on a smartwatch or phone.“It’s essentially like Pandora music,” said <a href="https://me.engin.umich.edu/people/faculty/elliott-rouse/" target="_blank" rel="noreferrer noopener">Elliott Rouse</a>, U-M associate professor of robotics and mechanical engineering and corresponding author of the study in Science Robotics. “You give it feedback, a thumbs up or thumbs down, and it curates a radio station based on your feedback. This is a similar idea, but it’s with exoskeleton assistance settings. In both cases, we are creating a model of the user’s preferences and using this model to optimize the user’s experience.”<iframe width="640" height="360" src="https://www.youtube.com/embed/OJ2ApTzZU2w?&amp;wmode=opaque&amp;rel=0&amp;enablejsapi=1&amp;origin=https://www.wevolver.com" frameborder="0" allowfullscreen="" class="fr-draggable" data-lf-form-tracking-inspected-kn9eq4roawkarlvp="true" data-lf-yt-playback-inspected-kn9eq4roawkarlvp="true" data-lf-vimeo-playback-inspected-kn9eq4roawkarlvp="true">&nbsp;</iframe>The team tested the approach with 14 participants, each wearing a pair of ankle exoskeletons as they walked at a steady pace of about 2.3 miles per hour. The volunteers could take as much time as they wanted between choices, although they were limited to 50 choices. Most participants were choosing the same assistance profile repeatedly by the 45th decision.&nbsp;After 50 rounds, the experimental team began testing the users to see whether the final assistance profile was truly the best—pairing it against 10 randomly generated (but plausible) profiles. On average, participants chose the settings suggested by the algorithm about nine out of 10 times, which highlights the accuracy of the proposed approach.<img src="https://s3-us-west-1.amazonaws.com/wevolver-project-images/froala%2F1697684045536-ExoChoice-content1.jpg" style="width: 766px;" class="fr-fic fr-dib">Ellie Wilson, a PhD student in mechanical engineering, demonstrates a new control strategy that customizes assistance provided by a pair of ankle exoskeletons. A machine learning algorithm presents her with two assistance profiles that it has selected based on previous data. She chooses one, and it presents another for comparison. After about 45 choices, most users have found an assistance profile that they choose repeatedly. Photo: Brenda Ahearn/Michigan Engineering“By using clever algorithms and a touch of AI, our system figures out what users want with easy yes-or-no questions,” said Ung Hee Lee, a recent U-M doctoral graduate from mechanical engineering and first author of the study, now at the robotics company Nuro. “I’m excited that this approach will make wearable robots comfortable and easy to use, bringing them closer to becoming a normal part of our day-to-day life.”The control algorithm manages four exoskeleton settings: how much assistance to give (peak torque), how long to go between peaks (timing), and how the exoskeleton both ramps up and reduces the assistance on either side of each peak. This assistance approach is based on how our calf muscle adds force to propel us forward in each step.Rouse reports that few groups are enabling users to set their own exoskeleton settings.“In most cases, controllers are tuned based on biomechanical or physiological results. The researchers are adjusting the settings on their laptops, minimizing the user’s metabolic rate. Right now, that’s the gold standard for exoskeleton assessment and control,” Rouse said.“I think our field overemphasizes testing with metabolic rate. People are actually very insensitive to changes in their own metabolic rate, so we’re developing exoskeletons to do something that people can’t actually perceive.”&nbsp;In contrast, user preference approaches not only focus on what users can perceive but also enable them to prioritize qualities that they feel are valuable.The study builds on the team’s previous effort to enable users to apply their own settings to an ankle exoskeleton. In that study, users had a touchscreen grid that put the level of assistance on one axis and the timing of the assistance on another. Users tried different points on the grid until they found one that worked well for them.&nbsp;Once users had discovered what was comfortable, over the course of a couple of hours, they were then able to find their settings on the grid within a couple of minutes. The new study cuts down that longer period of discovering which settings feel best as well as offering two new parameters: how the assistance ramps up and down.<img src="https://s3-us-west-1.amazonaws.com/wevolver-project-images/froala%2F1697684067237-ExoChoice-content3-1024x683.jpg" style="width: 766px;" class="fr-fic fr-dib">A close-up of the exoskeleton worn by Ellie Wilson. Photo: Brenda Ahearn/Michigan EngineeringThe data from that earlier study were used to feed the machine learning predictor. An evolutionary algorithm produces variations based on the assistance profiles that those earlier users preferred, and then the predictor—a neural network—ranked those assistance profiles. With each choice the users made, new potential assistance profiles were generated, ranked and presented to the user alongside their previous choice.&nbsp;The study was funded by X, Google’s “Moonshot Factory,” Robotics at Google (now Google Deepmind), and the D. Dan and Betty Kahn Foundation. The concept is currently licensed by Alphabet spinoff <a href="https://www.skipwithjoy.com/" target="_blank" rel="noreferrer noopener">Skip Innovations</a>.

exoskeletons-prosthetics