This document presents a low-pressure servo-valve specifically designed for haptic interfaces and lightweight robotic applications. The device is able to work with hydraulic and pneumatic fluidic sources, operating within a pressure range of (0 − 50 ·10⁵ Pa). All sensors and electronics were integrated inside the body of the valve, reducing the need for external circuits. Positioning repeatability as well as the capability to fine modulate the hydraulic flow were measured and verified. Furthermore, the static and dynamic behavior of the valve were evaluated for different working conditions, and a non-linear model identified using a recursive Hammerstein-Wiener parameter adaptation algorithm.

Категория: Ищем научные статьи | Нет комментариев »

Background: Practicing arm and gait movements with robotic assistance after neurologic injury can help patients improve their mo- vement ability, but patients sometimes reduce their effort during training in response to the assistance. Reduced effort has been hypothesized to diminish clinical outcomes of robotic training. To better understand patient slacking, we studied the role of visu-al distraction and auditory feedback in modulating patient effort during a common robot-assisted tracking task. Methods: Fourteen participants with chronic left hemiparesis from stroke, five control participants with chronic right hemiparesis and fourteen non-impaired healthy control participants, tracked a visual target with their arms while receiving adaptive assistance from a robotic arm exoskeleton. We compared four practice conditions: the baseline tracking task alone; tracking while also performing a visual distracter task; tracking with the visual distracter and sound feedback; and tracking with sound feedback. For the distracter task, symbols were randomly displayed in the corners of the computer screen, and the participants were instructed to click a mouse button when a target symbol appeared. The sound feedback consisted of a repeating beep, with the frequency of repetition made to increase with increasing tracking error. Results: Participants with stroke halved their effort and doubled their tracking error when per-forming the visual distracter task with their left hemiparetic arm. With sound feedback, however, these participants increased their effort and decreased their tracking error close to their baseline levels, while also performing the distracter task suc-cessfully. These effects were significantly smaller for the participants who used their non-paretic arm and for the participants without stroke. Conclusions: Visual distraction decreased participants effort during a standard robot-assisted movement training task. This effect was greater for the hemiparetic arm, suggesting that the increased demands associated with controlling an af-fected arm make the motor system more prone to slack when distracted. Providing an alternate sensory channel for feedback, i.e., auditory feedback of tracking error, enabled the participants to simultaneously perform the tracking task and distracter task effec-tively. Thus, incorporating real-time auditory feedback of performance errors might improve clinical outcomes of robotic therapy systems.

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На этот раз мы хотим рассказать вам про экзоскелеты. Если кто не знает, это такой костюм, похожий на тот, что надевал на себя Тони Старк в «Железном человеке». Что, не смотрели этот фильм? И комикс не читали?

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Категория: Продвижение | 1 Комментарий »

For decades, robotic devices have been suggested to enhance motor recovery by replicating clinical manual-assisted training. This paper presents an overground gait rehabilitation robot, which consists of a pair of robotic orthoses, the connected pelvic arm in parallel and a mounted mobile platform. The overground walking incorporates pelvic control together with active joints on the lower limb. As a preliminary evaluation, system trials have been conducted on healthy subjects and a spinal cord injury (SCI) subject, respectively. Electromyography signals were recorded from muscles of the lower limb for each subject. Three experiments were carried out: (i) health volunteers walking at self-preferred walking speed, (ii) a SCI subject walking with the help of three helpers and (iii) the same SCI subject walking with the assistance provided by the gait device. In the experiment, the muscle activation of overground walking was compared between the manual-assisted and robotic-assisted methods. The initial results show that the performance of the device can provide impact-less overground walking and it is comparable to the performance obtained by manual assistance in gait rehabilitation training.

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После трех лет «обучения» и «травм», включая сломанные конечности, двуногий робот MABEL стал самым быстрым механическим бегуном в мире.

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Категория: Mabel | Нет комментариев »