Biomechatronics is an applied interdisciplinary science that aims to integrate mechanical elements, electronics and parts of biological organisms. Biomechatronics includes the aspects of biology, mechanics, and electronics. It also encompasses the fields of robotics and neuroscience.
MiT’s research in Enhancing human physical capability:
We know from early Roman mosaics that physical rehabilitation and amplification technologies have been used during much of recorded history. Although the goal of constructing such technologies is not new, great scientific and technological hurdles still remain. Even today, permanent assistive devices are viewed by the physically challenged as separate, lifeless mechanisms and not intimate extensions of the human body–structurally, neurologically, and dynamically. The Biomechatronics group seeks to advance technologies that promise to accelerate the merging of body and machine, including device architectures that resemble the body’s own musculoskeletal design, actuator technologies that behave like muscle, and control methodologies that exploit principles of biological movement.
Research Projects
Artificial Gastrocnemius
Hugh Herr and Ken Endo
Human walking neuromechanical models show how each muscle works during normal, level-ground walking. They are mainly modeled with clutches and linear springs, and are able to capture dominant normal walking behavior. This suggests to us to use a series-elastic clutch at the knee joint for below-knee amputees. We have developed the powered ankle prosthesis, which generates enough force to enable a user to walk “normally.” However, amputees still have problems at the knee joint due to the lack of gastrocnemius, which works as an ankle-knee flexor and a plantar flexor. We hypothesize that metabolic cost and EMG patterns of an amputee with our powered ankle and virtual gastrocnemius will dramatically improve.
Biomimetic Active Prosthesis for Above-Knee Amputees
Hugh Herr, Elliott Rouse and Luke Mooney
Using biologically inspired design principles, a biomimetic robotic knee prosthesis is proposed that uses a clutchable series-elastic actuator. In this design, a clutch is placed in parallel to a combined motor and spring. This architecture permits the mechanism to provide biomimetic walking dynamics while requiring minimal electromechanical energy from the prosthesis. The overarching goal for this project is to design a new generation of robotic knee prostheses capable of generating significant energy during level-ground walking, that can be stored in a battery and used to power a robotic ankle prosthesis and other net-positive locomotion modes (e.g., stair ascent).
Control of Muscle-Actuated Systems via Electrical Stimulation
Waleed Farahat and Hugh Herr
Motivated by applications in rehabilitation and robotics, we are developing methodologies to control muscle-actuated systems via electrical stimulation. As a demonstration of such potential, we are developing centimeter-scale robotic systems that utilize muscle for actuation and glucose as a primary source of fuel. This is an interesting control problem because muscles: a) are mechanical state-dependent actuators; b) exhibit strong nonlinearities; and c) have slow time-varying properties due to fatigue-recuperation, growth-atrophy, and damage-healing cycles. We are investigating a variety of adaptive and robust control techniques to enable us to achieve trajectory tracking, as well as mechanical power-output control under sustained oscillatory conditions. To implement and test our algorithms, we developed an experimental capability that allows us to characterize and control muscle in real time, while imposing a wide variety of dynamical boundary conditions.
Carnegie Mellon University Experimental Biomechatronics:
CMU uses a combination of methods, each with different strengths and weaknesses, to obtain a complete understanding of robot-assisted locomotion. Experiments on humans allow direct measurement of human performance, discovery of new phenomena, and assessment of cooperative robot effectiveness. Simple mathematical models are intellectually accessible, allow high-throughput computational techniques such as optimization, and help inspire experimental studies. Mechanical design translates abstract ideas into practical devices for probitive experiments.
Experimental infrastructure development.
CMU is developing versatile laboratory robots to facilitate scientific study of robot-assisted locomotion and to accelerate co-robot development. Rather than spend years designing and refining autonomous devices that only test a single proposed function, we are developing tethered laboratory tools that sacrifice autonomy for exceptional versatility and performance. These tools enable systematic studies of a wide range of mechanical and control functions in a single platform, allowing rapid, early-stage evaluation of proposed interventions without having to build specialized devices for each test.
for more details visit: http://www.cmu.edu/ and http://www.mit.edu