On Friday July 4th at 10.00, we organize a special mini-symposium featuring three world-renowned experts in the field of balance, gait and exoskeleton technologies. Each of these speakers could headline a major international conference and having all three present in a single event at the University of Twente is truly exceptional.
They will present their latest research and insights in controlling balance during walking, the challenges in desinging and controlling exoskeletons and the newest development in using AI to have exoskeletons support gait and other cyclic and non-cyclic activities.
The symposium is co-organized by the Robotics Centre and ICMS.
Don’t miss these inspiring talks, everyone interested in biomechanics, robotics, rehabilitation or AI in bionics is welcome!
Program
- 10:00 - Welcome and Introduction
- 10:05 - Eight mechanisms for frontal plane balance control while walking – Bob Peterka, OSHU
About the Speaker
Follows
- 10:40 - Actuators, Controllers, and Transmission - The ACT Problem for Robotic Exoskeletons – Dan Ferris, University of Florida
Actuators, Controllers, and Transmission - The ACT Problem for Robotic Exoskeletons
Building successful robotic exoskeletons for assisting human movement is hard. Sixty years of engineering mechatronic devices have taught us that. The three biggest issues to overcome in developing robotic exoskeletons can be summarized with an ACT acronym. The Actuators available for robotic exoskeletons are much better now than in the last century, but they still have fundamental limitations compared to human muscle. Controllers are getting better with each iteration, but to achieve high-response feedforward control is still a dream. Lastly, the most underappreciated obstacle in robotic exoskeleton engineering is the power transmission between the exoskeleton and the human. This presentation will briefly frame the issues and suggest potential solutions.
AbouT the Speaker
Daniel Ferris
Daniel Ferris is the Robert W. Adenbaum Professor of Engineering Innovation at the University of Florida. His research focuses onhuman-machine interactions, both mechanical and electrical. Current projects include mobile brain imaging, virtual reality, robotic lower limb exoskeletons, and bionic lower limb prostheses. He completed his Ph.D. at UC Berkeley, M.S. at the University of Miami, and B.S. at the University of Central Florida. After completing postdoctoral fellowships at the UCLA Department of Neurology and the University of Washington Department of Electrical Engineering, he joined the faculty at the University of Michigan for 16 years. In 2017, Dr. Ferris moved to the J. Crayton Pruitt Family Department of Biomedical Engineering at the University of Florida. He is a Fellow of AAAS, ASB, AIMBE, and NAK.
Actuators, Controllers, and Transmission - The ACT Problem for Robotic Exoskeletons: - Building successful robotic exoskeletons for assisting human movement is hard. Sixty years of engineering mechatronic devices have taught us that. The three biggest issues to overcome in developing robotic exoskeletons can be summarized with an ACT acronym. The Actuators available for robotic exoskeletons are much better now than in the last century, but they still have fundamental limitations compared to human muscle. Controllers are getting better with each iteration, but to achieve high-response feedforward control is still a dream. Lastly, the most underappreciated obstacle in robotic exoskeleton engineering is the power transmission between the exoskeleton and the human. This presentation will briefly frame the issues and suggest potential solutions.
- 11:15 -Task Agnostic Control using Deep Learning for Wearable Lower-Limb Robotic Systems – Aaron Young, Georgia Tech
Task Agnostic Control using Deep Learning for Wearable Lower-Limb Robotic Systems
New advanced wearable exosuits are capable of restoring function to individuals with mobility challenges by making it easier to walk and restoring normative biomechanics. An important function of these devices is to timely and accurately recognize user intent and optimize the control to provide biomechanically appropriate assistance across diverse human activities. Key challenges in the wearable robotics control community include generalizing control systems across a rich variety of real-world tasks and diverse individuals while simultaneously personalizing control systems to each individual’s specific set of biomechanical needs. Our research has focused on data-driven approaches using deep learning to tackle these challenges with applications in lower limb wearable robotics. This talk will examine approaches for AI-driven personalization of controllers to unique subjects and generalizing controllers across a rich variety of real-world tasks through task agnostic control. New open-source datasets that we have generated to facilitate research in this area will also be briefly discussed.
ABOUT THE SPEAKER
Aaron Young
Dr. Aaron Young is an Associate Professor and Woodruff Faculty Fellow in the Woodruff School of Mechanical Engineering at Georgia Tech and has directed the Exoskeleton and Prosthetic Intelligent Controls (EPIC) lab since 2016. Dr. Young received his MS and PhD degrees in Biomedical Engineering with a focus on neural and rehabilitation engineering from Northwestern University in 2011 and 2014 respectively. He received a BS degree in Biomedical Engineering from Purdue University in 2009. He also completed a post-doctoral fellowship at the University of Michigan in the Human Neuromechanics Lab working with lower limb exoskeletons and powered orthoses to augment human performance. His research area is in advanced control systems for robotic prosthetic and exoskeleton systems for humans with movement impairment. He combines machine learning, robotics, human biomechanics, and control systems to design wearable robots to improve the community mobility of individuals with walking disability. He has received an NIH New Innovator Award, NIH NCMRR New Investigator award and IEEE New Faces of Engineering award, and his EPIC lab group recently won the International VIP Consortium Innovation Competition.
Organisers
This symposium is co-organized by
