FURI | Spring 2019

Variable Damping Control of Robotic Ankle Joint to Improve the Tradeoff Between Performance and Stability in the Frontal Plane

The growing demand for physically interactive robots for industrial, medical, and military applications is succeeded by a demand for better performing and more transparent human-robot systems. This research explores the strategy of variable damping control of an ankle exoskeleton robot. The purpose is to utilize a range of negative and positive damping values to either accelerate or decelerate the user based on intent of movement. The goal of this research is to show that robotic variable damping control can improve the tradeoff between performance and stability in physical human-robot interaction (pHRI) and lay the foundation for more intuitive physically-interactive robots.