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The results suggest that, by reducing their walking speed during intervention, patients return to the association phase and recognize external vibratory feedback, which may result in better intervention effects.Clinical Relevance-This study provides knowledge about the optimal walking speed when using vibro-tactile biofeedback for motor learning in stroke patients.Falls are a significant health concern for individuals with traumatic brain injury (TBI). MK-8245 cell line For developing effective preemptive strategies to reduce falls, it is essential to get an accurate and objective assessment of fall-risk. The current investigation evaluates the feasibility of a robotic, posturography-based fall-risk assessment to objectively quantify the risk of falls in individuals with TBI. Five individuals with chronic TBI (age 56.2 ± 4.7 years, time since injury 13.09±11.95 years) performed the fall-risk assessment on hunova- a commercial robotic platform for assessing and training balance. The unique assessment considers multifaceted fall-driving components, including static and dynamic balance, sit-to-stand, limits of stability, responses to perturbations, gait speed, and history of previous falls and provides a composite score for risk of falls, called silver index (SI), a number between 0 (no risk) and 100 (high risk) based on a machine learning-based predictive model. The SI score for individuant to objectively quantify the risk of falls in individuals with TBI.Actuation timing is an important parameter in powered ankle exoskeleton control that can significantly influence user experience and human-system performance. Previous studies have investigated the actuation timing through optimization under different objective functions, such as minimizing metabolic cost. However, little is known about people's psychological sense of actuation timing. This pilot study measured two subjects' sensitivity to small changes in actuation timing during walking. The just-noticeable difference (JND) threshold was determined via a fitted psychometric function, which quantified subjects' performance in discriminating between a pair of actuation timings. Subjects could detect changes of 3.6% and 6.8% stride period in actuation timing respectively, showing the difference in perception between individuals. The results from this pilot study provide a preliminary understanding of human perception towards exoskeleton control parameters, which offers insight on individual differences in exoskeleton usage and informs exoskeleton precision requirements to minimize undesired human-system interaction.Several recent research efforts have shown that the bioelectrical stimulation of their neuro-mechanical system can control the locomotion of Madagascar hissing cockroaches (Gromphadorhina portentosa). This has opened the possibility of using these insects to explore centimeter-scale environments, such as rubble piles in urban disaster areas. We present an inertial navigation system based on machine learning modules that is capable of localizing groups of G. portentosa carrying thorax-mounted inertial measurement units. The proposed navigation system uses the agents' encounters with one another as signals of opportunity to increase tracking accuracy. Results are shown for five agents that are operating on a planar (2D) surface in controlled laboratory conditions. Trajectory reconstruction accuracy is improved by 16% when we use encounter information for the agents, and up to 27% when we add a heuristic that corrects speed estimates via a search for an optimal speed-scaling factor.The rapid development of additive manufacturing technology makes it possible to fabricate a patient-specific surgical robot in a short time. To simplify the assembly process of the printed robotic system, compliant-joint-based monolithic structures are often used as substitutes for rigid-link mechanisms to realize flexible bending. In this paper, we introduce a cruciate-ligament-inspired compliant joint (CLCJ) to improve the bending stability of the 3D-printed continuum surgical robots. The basic structure of the tendon-driven CLCJ mechanism and its kinematic model were described in detail. The bending performance of CLCJ was also successfully evaluated by FEM simulation and experimental tests. Besides, a prototype of CLCJ-based surgical robotic system was presented to demonstrate its application in 3D-printed continuum surgical robots.Light touch on a rigid surface with minimal force below a specific threshold reduces postural sway by providing additional sensory cues from the fingertips. The feasibility of maintaining light touch depends on subject characteristics and task difficulty. Therefore, we introduce a method of maintaining light touch by using electrical muscle stimulation (EMS). We applied it in a single-leg standing task involving healthy adult subjects. The subjects stood upright in a single-leg stance on a firm surface and on foam rubber (FR), respectively, under three conditions no touch (NT, NT-FR), light touch without EMS (LT, LT-FR), and light touch in which EMS was applied based on the contact force (LT-EMS, LT-EMS-FR). The results showed that the force control by EMS helped maintain light touch and reduce postural sway compared with the no-touch condition. The amplitude of postural sway under the touch condition with EMS was equivalent to that under the touch condition without EMS.Soft pneumatic endoscopes developed for Minimally Invasive Surgeries (MIS) are designed upright which means that the starting positions straight. As the internal chambers are pressurized the endoscopic module starts bending. The relation between the pneumatic pressure and bending is nonlinear as the air needs first to fill the chamber before bending, and additionally frictional interaction to the sheath adds more to this start-up transient behaviour. This highly nonlinear behaviour severely limits the actuator sensitivity, accuracy, and repeatability near the endoscope's center of operating range. This paper introduces a novel pre-bent MR-compatible soft-surgical pneumatic endoscope design aimed to improve the bending performance of soft endoscopes by shifting the start-up transient out of the operating range. The pre-bent design of 12 mm diameter consists of an actuation and stiffening chamber, inextensible shell reinforcement with a backbone and rings, and external sheathing. The design parameters that include cross-sectional area, number of rings and backbone width are determined using Finite Element (FE) analysis. The motion profile of the fabricated endoscope, determined via experimentation, shows a successful shift of the start-up transient while the jamming structure increases the stiffness of the endoscope but limits the bending range. Further design developments of the endoscope are required for clinical application.Robotic exoskeletons require human control and decision making to switch between different locomotion modes, which can be inconvenient and cognitively demanding. To support the development of automated locomotion mode recognition systems (i.e., intelligent high-level controllers), we designed an environment recognition system using computer vision and deep learning. Here we first reviewed the development of the "ExoNet" database - the largest and most diverse open-source dataset of wearable camera images of indoor and outdoor real-world walking environments, which were annotated using a hierarchical labelling architecture. We then trained and tested the EfficientNetB0 convolutional neural network, which was optimized for efficiency using neural architecture search, to forward predict the walking environments. Our environment recognition system achieved ~73% image classification accuracy. These results provide the inaugural benchmark performance on the ExoNet database. Future research should evaluate and compare different convolutional neural networks to develop an accurate and real- time environment-adaptive locomotion mode recognition system for robotic exoskeleton control.Rope jumping is a popular training method in athletic programs, fitness, and physical education. Forward and backward rope jumping has been used for evaluating athlete's performance. Both of these two jumps require coordination in the upper and lower limbs. However, no study has focused on movement coordination during forward and backward rope jumping. Relative phase (RP) analysis was widely known as an innovative method for evaluating human movement coordination. Thus we aimed to investigate the movement coordination during forward and backward rope jumping by using RP analysis. 78 elementary and junior high school students participated in this study. 30 seconds rope jumping was recorded for both forward and backward by using iPhone video. Pose estimation software was used for jump motion tacking. Movement coordination was analyzed through RP analysis, absolute maximum value, mean absolute RP, and deviation phase were calculated for evaluating movement coordination, the trend of in or out-of-phase, as well as movement stability. As a result, 3994 forward and 3961 backward jumps were analyzed. There was a significant difference in movement coordination between forward and backward rope jumping. Compared to forward, backward jumps showed worse movement coordination, a trend to be out-of-phase, and less stability. It was the first time that movement coordination during rope jumping was studied. We considered that further research on coordination during rope jumping can provide new insight into athlete performance management, fitness guidance, and physical education.The development of self-help devices has attracted attention in the light of improving the activities of daily living (ADL) in patients with finger paralysis. These devices are required to reduce discomfort and enable greater degrees of grasping motions in patients. In this study, we developed a lightweight self-help device that uses neuromuscular electrical stimulation and hand-joint orthosis to finely control the fingers. In addition, we examined the possible grasping actions by testing how well the users of this device exhibited improvements in their ADL. Our results indicate that our self-help device can potentially be adapted to address finger paralysis.Shoulder pain and pathology are extremely common in adult manual wheelchair users with spinal cord injury (SCI). Within this population, biological sex and variability in shoulder joint dynamics have been shown to be important contributors to both shoulder pain and pathology. Sex-related differences in shoulder dynamics variability during pediatric manual wheelchair propulsion may influence a user's lifetime risk of shoulder pain and pathology. The purpose of this study was to assess the influence of biological sex on variability in three-dimensional (3-D) glenohumeral joint dynamics in pediatric manual wheelchair users with SCI. An inverse dynamics model computed 3-D glenohumeral joint angles, forces, and moments of 20 pediatric manual wheelchair users. Levene's tests assessed biological sex-related differences in variability. Females exhibited less variability in glenohumeral joint kinematics and forces, but greater variability in joint moments than males. Evaluation of glenohumeral joint dynamics with consideration for biological sex and variability strengthens our interpretation of the relationships among shoulder function, pain, and pathology in pediatric manual wheelchair users.