Soft Robotics: Design for Simplicity, Performance, and Robustness of Robots for Interaction with Humans.

This thesis deals with the design possibilities concerning the next generation of advanced Robots. Aim of the work is to study, analyse and realise artificial systems that are essentially simple, performing and robust and can live and coexist with humans. The main design guideline followed in doing so is the Soft Robotics Approach, that implies the design of systems with intrinsic mechanical compliance in their architecture. The first part of the thesis addresses design of new soft robotics actuators, or robotic muscles. At the beginning are provided information about what a robotic muscle is and what is needed to realise it. A possible classification of these systems is analysed and some criteria useful for their comparison are explained. After, a set of functional specifications and parameters is identified and defined, to characterise a specific subset of this kind of actuators, called Variable Stiffness Actuators. The selected parameters converge in a data-sheet that easily defines performance and abilities of the robotic system. A complete strategy for the design and realisation of this kind of system is provided, which takes into account their me- chanical morphology and architecture. As consequence of this, some new actuators are developed, validated and employed in the execution of complex experimental tasks. In particular the actuator VSA-Cube and its add-on, a Variable Damper, are developed as the main com- ponents of a robotics low-cost platform, called VSA-CubeBot, that v can be used as an exploratory platform for multi degrees of freedom experiments. Experimental validations and mathematical models of the system employed in multi degrees of freedom tasks (bimanual as- sembly and drawing on an uneven surface), are reported. The second part of the thesis is about the design of multi fingered hands for robots. In this part of the work the Pisa-IIT SoftHand is introduced. It is a novel robot hand prototype designed with the purpose of being as easily usable, robust and simple as an industrial gripper, while exhibiting a level of grasping versatility and an aspect comparable to that of the human hand. In the thesis the main theo- retical tool used to enable such simplification, i.e. the neuroscience– based notion of soft synergies, are briefly reviewed. The approach proposed rests on ideas coming from underactuated hand design. A synthesis method to realize a desired set of soft synergies through the principled design of adaptive underactuated mechanisms, which is called the method of adaptive synergies, is discussed. This ap- proach leads to the design of hands accommodating in principle an arbitrary number of soft synergies, as demonstrated in grasping and manipulation simulations and experiments with a prototype. As a particular instance of application of the method of adaptive syner- gies, the Pisa–IIT SoftHand is then described in detail. The design and implementation of the prototype hand are shown and its effec- tiveness demonstrated through grasping experiments. Finally, control of the Pisa/IIT Hand is considered. Few different control strategies are adopted, including an experimental setup with the use of surface Electromyographic signals

Development of full-body models for human jump landing dynamics and control

Thesis (Sc. D.)--Massachusetts Institute of Technology, Dept. of Aeronautics and Astronautics, 1997.Includes bibliographical references (leaves 260-269).by D. Keoki Jackson.Sc.D

Design and evaluation of a powered prosthetic foot with monoarticular and biarticular actuation

To overcome the limitations of passive prosthetic feet, powered prostheses have been developed, that can provide the range of motion and power of their human counterparts. These devices can equalize spatio-temporal gait parameters and improve the metabolic effort compared to passive prostheses, but asymmetries and compensatory motions between the healthy and impaired leg remain. Unlike their human counter part, existing powered prosthetic feet are fully monoarticular actuating only the prosthetic ankle joint, whereas in the biological counter part, ankle and knee joint are additionally coupled by the biarticular gastrocnemius muscle. The goal of this work is to investigate the benefits of a powered biarticular transtibial prosthesis comprising mono- and biarticular actuators similar to the human example. The contributions of the present work are as follows: A biarticular prosthesis prototype is methodically designed to match the capabilities of the monoarticular muscles at the human ankle joint as well as the biarticular gastrocnemius muscle during level walking. The prototype consists of an existing powered monoarticular prosthetic foot, which is extended with a knee orthoses and a stationary biarticular Bowden cable actuator. Both actuators are modeled as serial elastic actuators (SEA) and the identification of the model parameters is conducted. A model based torque control utilizing the measurements commonly available in SEAs, an impedance control law based on human ankle reference trajectories, and a high level control to enable steady walking in the lab are introduced. The proposed hardware setup and control structure can provide sagittal plane angles and torques similar to the mono- and biarticular muscles at the human ankle, with proper torque tracking performance and a freely adjustable allocation of torque between the monoarticular and biarticular actuator. The biarticular prosthesis is evaluated in the gait lab with three subjects with unilateral transtibial amputation utilizing a continuous sweep experimental protocol to investigate the metabolic effort and spatio-temporal gait parameters. All subjects show a tendency to reduced metabolic effort for medium activity of the artificial gastrocnemius, although noise level and time variation are large. In addition to the reduction in metabolic effort, the artificial gastrocnemius is able to influence spatio temporal gait parameters between the impaired and the intact side, but partially opposing effects are observed among the individual subjects. In conclusion, this thesis describes the implementation of an artificial gastrocnemius following the human example and the systematic investigation of metabolic effort and spatio-temporal gait parameters. It is shown that the addition of the artificial gastrocnemius to a monoarticular prosthesis can positively affect the investigated parameters. The meaningfulness of the results should be improved by increased clinical effort in future work

The role of noise in sensorimotor control

Goal-directed arm movements show stereotypical trajectories, despite the infinite possible ways to reach a given end point. This thesis examines the hypothesis that this stereotypy arises because movements are optimised to reduce the consequences of signal-dependent noise on the motor command. Both experimental and modelling studies demonstrate that signal-dependent noise arises from the normal behaviour of the muscle and motor neuron pool, and has a particular distribution across muscles of different sizes. Specifically, noise decreases in a systematic fashion with increasing muscle strength and motor unit number. Simulations of obstacle avoidance performance in the presence of signal-dependent noise demonstrate that the optimal trajectory for reaching the target accurately and without collision matches the observed trajectories. Isometric force generation is also shown to have systematic changes in variability with posture, which can be explained by the presence of signal-dependent noise in the muscles of the arm. These results confirm the tested hypothesis and imply that consideration of the statistics of action is crucial to human movement planning. To investigate the importance of feedback in the motor system, the impact of static position on motor excitability was examined using transcranial magnetic stimulation and systematic changes in motor evoked potentials were observed. Force generated at the wrist following stimulation was analysed in terms of different possible movement representations, and the differences between force fields arising from stimulation over the cervical spinal cord and from stimulation over primary motor cortex are determined. These results demonstrate the structured influence of proprioceptive feedback on the human motor system. All the experiments are discussed in relation to current theories describing the control of human movements and the impact of noise in the motor system

Proceedings of the 9th international conference on disability, virtual reality and associated technologies (ICDVRAT 2012)

The proceedings of the conferenc