Humans are intrinsically unstable in quiet stance from a rigid body system viewpoint; however, they maintain balance thanks to muscular and neuro-sensory properties whilst still exhibiting postural sway characteristics. This work introduces a one-degree-of-freedom supernumerary tail for balance augmentation in the sagittal plane to negate anteriorposterior postural sway. Simulations showed that the tail could successfully balance a human with impaired ankle stiffness and neural control. Insights into tail design and control were made; namely, to minimise muscular load the tail must have a significant component in the direction of the muscle load, mounting location of the tail is significant in maximising inertial properties for balance augmentation and that adaptive control will exploit augmentation characteristic of the tail best for different loads held by a wearer.
This paper presents a novel concept of a hybrid wheel-legged robot used to navigate uneven or difficult terrain. We present the design prototype and validation testing where the onboard sensors' data is used to navigate around or over obstacles with the wheels or legs. During testing the prototype was found to be able to climb a step of 70 mm using the legs. With further adjustment to the back of the robot this could be increased. It could also detect potential obstacles directly in front of it using only a few sensors.
Humans are intrinsically unstable in quiet stance from a rigid body system viewpoint; however, they maintain balance thanks to neuro-muscular sensory control properties. With increasing levels of balance related incidents in industrial and ageing populations globally each year, the development of assistive mechanisms to augment human balance is paramount. This work investigates the mechanical characteristics of kinematically dissimilar one and two degrees-of-freedom supernumerary robotic tails for balance augmentation. Through dynamic simulations and manipulability assessments, the importance of variable coupling inertia in creating a sufficient reaction torque is highlighted. It is shown that two-dof tails with solely revolute joints are best suited to address the balance augmentation issue. Within the two-dof options, the characteristics of open versus closed loop tails is investigated, with the ultimate design selection requiring trade-offs between environmental workspace, biomechanical factors and manufacturing ease to be made.
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