GCSP research stipend | Fall 2020

Muscle Response During Multidirectional Interaction with a Variable Damping Controlled Ankle Robot

Robotic exoskeletons have tremendous potential for implementation in defense, industrial factories, and medical rehabilitation. However, current systems rely primarily on negative damping controllers which although safe, are very slow and unagile. In order to maximize the efficiency of exoskeletons, the damping of the system may change proportional to the acceleration of the user through a variable damping controller. This project aims to quantify the ability of a variable damping controller to reduce muscle activation using electromyography sensors during 2D physical human-robot interaction (pHRI) of the human ankle.