FURI | Fall 2018

Variable Damping Control of the Robotic Ankle Joint to Improve Trade-off between Performance and Stability

Managing the trade-off between agility and stability has been an important issue throughout the history of physical human-robot interaction. This study focuses on using a wearable ankle robot to quantify variable damping controls that aims to balance the trade-off between agility and stability by emulating a wide range of robotic damping from negative to positive values based on the user’s intent of movement. Integration of knowledge obtained from this line of research will allow for the implementation of a variable damping controller that maximizes performance without compromising stability of any coupled human-robot system.