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A Nighttime Walk with Garnette Cadogan:
GC: Night walks are incredibly important. The city becomes a different creature at night. There are levels of intimacy, of openness, of freedom, of control, of interaction, of encounter, that far surpasses—or, at least, offers a very different quality than—those of the day. People get drawn into associations and affinities that come from seeing each other regularly at night. In part, because places are more sparse; less obstructions to a welcoming eye contact. You feel it on the sidewalks, in the streets, and in the alleyways. The stoops are yours much more so than during the day. The very atmosphere feels more ready to accommodate you. Many places have one, singular, ingrained core story during the daytime, but at night? At night, these places give up many stories. A multiplicity of stories waiting to reveal themselves to you.
I: Do you have a preference between, let’s call them Day New York and Night New York?
GC: Give me Night New York over Day New York a million times over. That may partly be due to my constitution, and less to do with New York. I come alive at night. My friends say I get my second wind at midnight, but the truth is I get my first wind at midnight. My second wind hits at around three o’clock. I love the night. I love the sense of mystery that comes with it.
Garnette even walks my neighborhood in Waco in the middle of the night, when he comes to visit. I sort of feel that I ought to be with him, but I keep on snoozing…. Garnette is our great documentarian of city walking. He’s mainly in Boston now, but to go for a long walk with Garnette in Manhattan is a great thing. On one walk I think we covered the whole of Greenwich Village.
A new control algorithm could make ankle exoskeletons automatically adapt to individual users and tasks, say researchers.
Current exoskeletons are limited because they must be tailored to a single user performing a single task, like walking in a straight line. Any changes require a lengthy set of manual readjustments.
The new control algorithm demonstrates the ability to handle different speeds, as well as changes in gait between running and walking. It could pave the way for exoskeletons that are better able to handle the uncertainties of the real world.
“This particular type of ankle exoskeleton can be used to augment people who have limited mobility,” says Leia Stirling, associate professor of industrial and operations engineering and robotics at the University of Michigan and senior author of the study in PLOS ONE.
“That could be an older adult who wouldn’t normally be able to walk to the park with their grandkids. But wearing the system, they now have extra assistance that enables them to do more than they could before.”
The control algorithm directly measures how quickly muscle fibers are expanding and contracting to determine the amount of chemical energy the muscle is using while doing its work. Then, it compares that measurement with a biological model to determine the best way to assist.
Measuring muscle physiology directly is a key departure from current methods, which use broader measures of motion. Going straight to the source of motion could result in more accurate measurements over a larger range of movements with far less computing power required.
Stirling and first author Paul Pridham, senior research area specialist in industrial and operations engineering, zeroed in on the ankle because it plays a key role in mobility. Assisting the muscles in the ankle could have a dramatic impact on our ability to walk further and faster.
Since the research was done during COVID-19 restrictions, testing with human participants wasn’t possible. Instead, the team used data on existing ankle exoskeleton devices and muscle dynamics from previous studies to simulate, test, and adjust the algorithm to be more responsive to changes in speed and gait.
Human testing is an important next step, and will require the measurement of muscle fibers in real time using ultrasound. While much work and refinement remains, the researchers are confident that the new avenue of research will one day help people on the ground.
“This has the potential to help just about anyone,” Pridham says. “From someone who walks a lot for their job, to individuals in the military that perform tasks for long periods of time, to people with muscular disorders that need some extra assistance, and the elderly who need help day-to-day.”
The Under Secretary of Defense for Research and Engineering funded the work.
Source: Jessalyn Tamez for University of Michigan
The post Ankle exoskeleton algorithm adapts to speed and gait appeared first on Futurity.
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