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This project is motivated by DARPA Warrior Web Program.
- There has been a lot of research into exoskeletons over the years to alleviate heavy loads that soldiers should burden, but strapping a person into a robotic outfit just isn't practical in a combat zone yet.
- DARPA's Warrior Web program aims to build a lightweight suit that improves a soldier's endurance and overall effectiveness, while preventing injuries.
- The main goals by developing the warrior web are
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In order to develop an under-suit that doesn’t interrupt wearer’s free movement, researchers are trying to make it soft and deformable, but still capable of applying force to body joints. Among several different projects in the Warrior Web program, I focused on Harvard exosuit.
- Harvard Biodesign group, one of a project groups in this program, is trying to make their warrior web suit soft and light, and they call their suit harvard exosuit.
- Experimental data proved that it can help loaded walking by reducing metabolic costs.
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How to model a subject wearing active actuator
The diagram describes what procedure my model was had gone through.
- The first three steps are basic modeling procedure in Opensim to make a model dynamically and kinematically consistent to the experimental data. For more information, refer to
- After
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- RRA is done to the model, probes for calculating metabolic cost were added to the model. . For more information about how to add the probes, refer to
Simulation-Based Design to Reduce Metabolic Cost
- And then, I added active actuators to the model. Here, I used PathActuator class to simulate active actuators of exosuit, as they are cable driven actuator. If you are interested in how PathActuator
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- works, refer to
Sample models
Loaded gait model
Now, let’s take a look at my project results. In this slide, different types of loaded gait models are shown. These models are based on the generic gait model in Opensim, and they were adjusted through RRA algorithm in order to be dynamically consistent with experimental data. After RRA had been done, I added different types of actuators to different models. One on the left is a loaded walking model without any actuator, and the one in the middle has ankle actuators on both ankles, and the one on the right has hip actuators around hip flexion DOF. You can see cable driven actuators which are represented by blue lines on the bottom. With these models, I first compared the effectiveness of ankle actuator and hip actuator in loaded gait scenario.
Add explanation hereHere are the figures of sample simulation models. I created several different types of models for both loaded gait and unloaded gait.
Loaded gait model
Three different types of models were created for loaded gait model
- A model without actuator
- A model with path actuators supporting plantar flexion
- A model with path actuators supporting hip extension
The path actuator supporting plantar flexion is attached to heel and tibia, and the pathactuator supporting hip extension is attached to backpack and femur.
Unloaded gait model
Same procedure has been done to unloaded walking data and models. All of these models represent unloaded walking model by empty backpack.
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