Abstract
Walking on uneven terrain with a wearable assistive robot requires the controller to adapt to rapid changes in human’s biomechanics. To do so, the changes due to terrain should be measured using wearable sensors. We investigated human ankle joint mechanics when stepping on different small, unanticipated bumps with either the forefoot or the rearfoot. It was shown that kinematics and kinetics change significantly depending on how humans step on a bump, and that changes in kinematics could be measured by IMUs. This result could be used to inform the design of adaptive controllers for wearable robots that provide optimal assistance to the ankle joint when walking on uneven terrain.
The material is based upon the work supported by the Defense Advanced Research Projects Agency, Warrior Web Program (Contract No. W911NF-14-C-0051). This study was also funded by Funai Overseas Scholarship (T.M.), Samsung Scholarship (S. L.), and São Paulo Research Foundation (FAPESP; Grant No. 2015/02116-1) (D. M. R.). This work was partially funded by the Wyss Institute for Biologically Inspired Engineering and the John A. Paulson School of Engineering and Applied Sciences at Harvard University.
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Acknowledgments
The authors would like to thank Philippe Malcolm and Jozefien Speeckaert for their contribution to this work.
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Miyatake, T. et al. (2017). Biomechanical Analysis and Inertial Sensing of Ankle Joint While Stepping on an Unanticipated Bump. In: González-Vargas, J., Ibáñez, J., Contreras-Vidal, J., van der Kooij, H., Pons, J. (eds) Wearable Robotics: Challenges and Trends. Biosystems & Biorobotics, vol 16. Springer, Cham. https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-319-46532-6_56
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DOI: https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-319-46532-6_56
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