FURI | Spring 2018

The Response of the Human Ankle to Variable Negative Damping

The development of wearable robots has the potential to drastically improve human lives. This study focuses on using a wearable ankle robot to quantify lower-limb motor control. After creating a video game for human subjects to play, kinematic data and electromyographic (EMG) data was collected from ten healthy subjects. This study continues previous research on how to best assist ankle motion through variable negative damping, which appears to help when motion is both initiated and completed. In the future, the data collected from this study can be used to develop lighter wearable robots for those with lower-limb disabilities.