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Most humanoid robots walk with bent knees, which particularly requires high motor torques at knees and gives an unnatural walking manner. It is therefore essential to design a control method that produces a motion which is more energy efficient and natural comparable to those performed by humans. In this paper, we address this issue by modeling the virtual spring-damper based on the cart-table model...
Total Knee/Hip Replacement(TKR/THR) is one of the most important orthopedic surgical techniques of this century. If patient's whole joint is damaged, an artificial joint (total hip/knee replacement surgery) can relieve patient's pain and help the patient get back normal activities. The goal for TKR/THR is to relieve the pain in the joint caused by the damage done to the cartilage. The surgeon will...
Our ultimate goal is introducing energy-efficient walking patterns to actual humanoid robots. It is known that limit cycle based walking methods, e.g. Passive Dynamic Walking, have such a desired property. Unfortunately, the application of the methods has been limited to simple planar biped models. In this paper, we propose a way of extending limit cycle based walking pattern generation toward a 7DOF...
The aim of our study is to construct a Humanoid with enhanced bipedal walk, which can be utilized in the Medical Sector, as an effective substitute for Artificial Limbs. With reference to the human body, we have designed a humanoid such that the joints are exposed to zero friction, and the efficiency of the motor is increased. The natural phenomenon in the human to adjust the center of gravity and...
Most of low-cost and small-size humanoid robots have been developed by using the conventional mechanism and simple control units. The conventional mechanism has a unique structure when the pose of feet and waist is fixed, and the small humanoid robot has to walk with bending knee joints without waist joints. On the other hand, these small humanoid robots perform low capability in the dynamic walking...
Achieving energy efficiency remains an important goal in legged robot running. This paper presents a novel offline method to generate globally efficient gaits for a point-foot articulated hopping robot. Previous gait generators found in the literature do not reach a global optimum, since takeoff and touch-down (transition) states are pre-specified. In this work, an optimization procedure produces...
The use of robotic assistive devices and exoskeletons to supply movement therapy for the rehabilitation of patients following variety of diseases is noticeably growing presently. In order to provide consistent therapy as well as walking assistance, we are developing a wearable lower-limb exoskeleton robot with an adaptive foot device for better walking ability and enhanced stability. In this paper,...
The authors are developing a knee joint robot as an educational tool for students becoming physical therapist (PT) or occupational therapist (OT). The robot can simulate some problems of a knee joint, such as range of motion trouble, contracture, rigidity, spasticity and so on. The robot has a knee joint mechanism to realize not only flexion/extension movement but also inner/outer rotation movement,...
The advent of the super aged society and decline in earning power makes it critical to develop technologies that can support the limitations of our human abilities. We have developed Robot Suit HAL to support human physical capabilities. A wearable robot expected to work in human society is required to have a high structural safety, with a tough and compact structure and a human outline. To achieve...
This paper proposed a fuzzy control system based on oscillator networks for the locomotion control of the quadruped robot whose legs have no yaw freedom. The oscillator networks are used to generate stable, synchronized leg gait signal for the locomotion of the robot. The fuzzy controller is introduced to tune the parameters of the oscillator networks for generating adaptive leg motion curve for the...
Although there have been much research on robot walking, the energy efficiency of central pattern generator (CPG)-based walking has not received much attention. This study proposes a novel method for acquiring energy-efficient CPG-based bipedal walking for a robot with knees and feet. In this method, we introduce a torque-free period for swing leg control into the swing leg control cycle. During this...
Recently, It has become a rapidly aging society. Coupled with a decrease in the number of farmers, this has becomes a serious problem in agriculture. Agricultural work includes a great deal of heavy work and special work postures, imposing a large physical strain on farmers. Therefore, we developed the Wearable Agri-Robot, which was designed as an exoskeletal mechanism to assist in the wearer's work...
In the present study, we investigate a control strategy for hopping motions of an articulated leg that is driven by series elastic actuation. A highly compliant spring in the knee joint allows the exploitation of periodic energy storage but creates a major control challenge by severely limiting the bandwidth of closed-loop position or force control. This handicap is intensified by slow actuators,...
Safe actuators with controllable compliance are indispensable for assistive robots working in human environment and especially for rehabilitation devices physically interacting with patient. The paper introduces new patent pending soft fluidic actuators with rotary elastic chambers (REC), which produces rotational motion without any additional transmission elements. The key actuator features as inherent...
Lesions of the central nervous system often lead to walking impairments. Primary rehabilitation aims at the improvement of the gait capacity by application of task oriented training regimes utilizing the inherent capability of neural networks for reorganization. However, a sufficient training intensity for enhancement of this neuroplasticity can only be achieved during the inpatient phase, which -...
Conventional trans-femoral (TF) prosthesis adopts body-powered actuation manner, in which flexion and extension of knee joint rely on the movement of residual limb and body weight of amputee and is controlled by adjustable damping force output by pneumatic or hydraulic cylinder mounted on the TF prosthesis. This manner, however, suffers from the deficiency of driving torque when carrying out some...
This paper describes the mechanism of KBR-1R (Kanagawa Biped Robot-1 Refined) that is able to walk on even and uneven terrain. The KBR-1R has 15 degrees of freedom (DOF) (two 6 DOF legs and a 3 DOF waist). It was designed with a large movable range like a human. Also, a compensatory motion control for stable walking is described which is based on the motion of the trunk. Using the KBR-1R, various...
We present a new quadruped robot, ldquoCheetahrdquo, featuring three-segment pantographic legs with passive compliant knee joints. Each leg has two degrees of freedom - knee and hip joint can be actuated using proximal mounted RC servo motors, force transmission to the knee is achieved by means of a bowden cable mechanism. Simple electronics to command the actuators from a desktop computer have been...
The work presented in this paper concerns the synthesis of Functional Electrical Stimulation (FES) patterns to generate movements of paralysed limbs for spinal cord injured patients. We propose an approach based on a nonlinear optimization formulation that may encounter physiological and technological constraints. The study considers a biomechanical knee model and the associated agonist/antagonist...
A velocity based gait generation algorithm with real time adaptation rules which are necessary for steady walking is suggested. Particularly, we have developed a steady crawl gait with duty factor beta = 0.75. The main feature of the suggested algorithm is that it does not based on the foothold selection, and it can be used for the walking of blind robots on more realistic irregular terrain. The adaptation...
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