Interactive Gait Assistance Experience Lab

• Subject Area: Systems Engineering
• Term: Funded in 2023
• Project identifier: Deutsche Forschungsgemeinschaft (DFG) - Project number 531419498

Assisting human movements via robotic systems is a promising and at the same time challenging research area. Motivated by societal needs, such as the aging population, the potential of wearable robotic systems to assist, restore, and train motor functions is investigated intensively. However, due to the close interaction with human users, many open questions remain regarding the development of the systems, components, and algorithms, especially when human factors are considered. Therefore, wearable robotic systems represent a core research topic of several chairs and departments of the Faculty of Engineering at Friedrich-Alexander-Universität Erlangen-Nürnberg (FAU). Our goal is to explore human-centered robotics and to find solutions that combine high functionality and user-friendly interaction properties. Through the new "Interactive Gait Assistance Experience Lab", the possibilities for experimental examination of human-machine interaction in (locomotion) assistance systems will be significantly expanded. The focus is on the investigation of biomechanical and psychological effects in realistic contexts in order to analyze their interactions with different technical implementations and to systematically incorporate the findings into systems engineering methods. In addition to the simulation of the locomotion scenario, the emulation of the physical interaction with the assistance system plays a central role. The human-in-the-loop experimental system serves to analyze the motion assistance (of the lower extremities): By combining commercially available products for simulating physical and cognitive interaction, users can experience a wide variety of robotic assistance systems in a dynamically modifiable virtual environment. This allows individual interaction experiences to be understood more deeply, both biomechanically and psychologically, and to be taken into account during technical development and thus before mechatronic implementation. This major research instrumentation combines a highly dynamic, instrumented dual-belt treadmill, which can generate perturbations through moving along additional degrees of freedom, with a precise motion capture system, a system for the projection of virtual (locomotion) environments as well as a modular system for the emulation of prosthesis/exoskeleton components, which allows the flexible comparison of a wide variety of technical solutions before the actual implementation. This combination of devices, which is probably unique worldwide, is intended to equip FAU Erlangen-Nuremberg sustainably for interdisciplinary cutting-edge research in the field of motion assistance through wearable robotic systems, thus creating the basis for diverse (inter)national collaborations.

• DFG Programme: Major Research Instrumentation
• Major Instrumentation: Interaktives Lokomotionsassistenz-Erfahrungs-Labor
• Instrumentation Group: 3490 Sonstige medizinische Registriergeräte und Zubehör
• Applicant Institution: Friedrich-Alexander-Universität Erlangen-Nürnberg
• Leader: Professor Dr.-Ing. Philipp Beckerle