State-of-the-Art Review on Wearable Obstacle Detection Systems Developed for Assistive Technologies and Footwear.

Walking independently is essential to maintaining our quality of life but safe locomotion depends on perceiving hazards in the everyday environment. To address this problem, there is an increasing focus on developing assistive technologies that can alert the user to the risk destabilizing foot contact with either the ground or obstacles, leading to a fall. Shoe-mounted sensor systems designed to monitor foot-obstacle interaction are being employed to identify tripping risk and provide corrective feedback.

Application of Wearable Sensors in Actuation and Control of Powered Ankle Exoskeletons: A Comprehensive Review.

Powered ankle exoskeletons (PAEs) are robotic devices developed for gait assistance, rehabilitation, and augmentation. To fulfil their purposes, PAEs vastly rely heavily on their sensor systems. Human-machine interface sensors collect the biomechanical signals from the human user to inform the higher level of the control hierarchy about the user's locomotion intention and requirement, whereas machine-machine interface sensors monitor the output of the actuation unit to ensure precise tracking of the high-level control commands via the low-level control scheme.

The effectiveness of EMG-driven neuromusculoskeletal model calibration is task dependent.

Calibration of neuromusculoskeletal models using functional tasks is performed to calculate subject-specific musculotendon parameters, as well as coefficients describing the shape of muscle excitation and activation functions. The objective of the present study was to employ a neuromusculoskeletal model of the shoulder driven entirely from muscle electromyography (EMG) to quantify the influence of different model calibration strategies on muscle and joint force predictions. Three healthy adults performed dynamic shoulder abduction and flexion, followed by calibration tasks that included reaching, head touching as well as active and passive abduction, flexion and axial rotation, and submaximal isometric abduction, flexion and axial rotation contractions.

Static optimization underestimates antagonist muscle activity at the glenohumeral joint: A musculoskeletal modeling study.

Static optimization is commonly employed in musculoskeletal modeling to estimate muscle and joint loading; however, the ability of this approach to predict antagonist muscle activity at the shoulder is poorly understood. Antagonist muscles, which contribute negatively to a net joint moment, are known to be important for maintaining glenohumeral joint stability. This study aimed to compare muscle and joint force predictions from a subject-specific neuromusculoskeletal model of the shoulder driven entirely by measured muscle electromyography (EMG) data with those from a musculoskeletal model employing static optimization.