Quantifying Muscular Response During Physical Human-Robot Interaction With a Variable Damping Controller

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. In order to maximize the efficiency of exoskeletons, the damping of the system must 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 upper limb physical human-robot interaction (pHRI).