Thesis Project Form

Back-support exoskeletons for assisting workers performing manual material handling are becoming more and more widespread. The proponents have developed an active robotic device that allows to test the effects of different control strategies on users (https://advr.iit.it/projects/inail-scc/esoscheletro).

The student will join the XoLab multi-disciplinary research group, in the ADVR department of the Istituto Italiano di Tecnologia (IIT), Genova, Italy. The active exoskeleton developed in our group can generate custom torque profiles (‘control strategy’) to assist users, relying on different sensor inputs. Currently, exoskeleton control allows to adapt the strategy to the task being performed, but the effectiveness of this approach still has to be validated.
To validate this new approach, the student will compare muscle activity and metabolic energy expenditure recorded during assistance with different control strategies. The experiments will allow the student to explore important aspects of research on human-robot interaction, motion tracking, gait analysis and real-time exoskeleton control. The study of the mechanisms of interaction between exoskeleton and user will allow to develop critic thinking on possible future design and approaches.

- Data analysis on motion capture, muscular activity and metabolic consumption techniques.
- Experiments on healthy subjects.
- Analysis on the effectiveness of different control strategies based on different tasks (walking, standing, bending, etc)