Enhancing Human Mobility with Agile Robotic Prostheses and Orthoses

This lecture by Robert D. Gregg, Associate Professor at the University of Michigan, explores innovative approaches to robotic prostheses and orthoses for enhanced human mobility. Discover a new paradigm for controlling powered prosthetic legs that adapts to continuous variations in walking, stairs, and transitions between sitting and standing. Learn how these adaptable mid-level controllers create a simplified activity space for intent classification, allowing amputee users to control transitions through intuitive rules with over 99% accuracy. Explore the different control philosophy needed for exoskeletons that assist existing joint function, including an energetic control paradigm for backdrivable exoskeletons that reduces muscular effort without requiring explicit knowledge of the activity. See how this task-agnostic control method enabled a bilateral knee exoskeleton to mitigate quadriceps fatigue effects during various physical tasks across multiple terrains, reducing injury risks from fatigue-induced compensations. The presentation concludes with preliminary results from studies using hip and knee exoskeletons to improve mobility for elderly individuals in real-world scenarios.