Physiological Indicators of Fluency and Engagement during Sequential and Simultaneous Modes of Human-Robot Collaboration.

OCCUPATIONAL APPLICATIONSAn understanding of fluency in human-robot teaming from a physiological standpoint is still incomplete. In our experimental study involving 24 participants, we designed a scenario for shared-space human-robot collaboration (HRC) for a material sorting task. When compared to a sequential mode of interaction, the simultaneous mode resulted in significantly higher perceptions of fluency and engagement, primarily by reducing human idle time.

Effect of hip abduction assistance on metabolic cost and balance during human walking.

The use of wearable robots to provide walking assistance has rapidly grown over the past decade, with notable advances made in robot design and control methods toward reducing physical effort while performing an activity. The reduction in walking effort has mainly been achieved by assisting forward progression in the sagittal plane. Human gait, however, is a complex movement that combines motions in three planes, not only the sagittal but also the transverse and frontal planes.

Predicting the metabolic cost of exoskeleton-assisted squatting using foot pressure features and machine learning.

Recent studies found that wearable exoskeletons can reduce physical effort and fatigue during squatting. In particular, subject-specific assistance helped to significantly reduce physical effort, shown by reduced metabolic cost, using human-in-the-loop optimization of the exoskeleton parameters. However, measuring metabolic cost using respiratory data has limitations, such as long estimation times, presence of noise, and user discomfort.

Reducing Squat Physical Effort Using Personalized Assistance From an Ankle Exoskeleton.

Exoskeletons can assist humans during squatting and the assistance has the potential to reduce the physical demands. Although several squat assistance methods are available, the effect of personalized assistance on physical effort has not been examined. We hypothesize that personalized assistance will reduce the physical effort of squatting.

Comparison Between 5- and 1-Year Outcomes Using Cutoff Values of Pressure Drop Coefficient and Fractional Flow Reserve for Diagnosing Coronary Artery Diseases.

Background: The current pressure-based coronary diagnostic index, fractional flow reserve (FFR), has a limited efficacy in the presence of microvascular disease (MVD). To overcome the limitations of FFR, the objective is to assess the recently introduced pressure drop coefficient (CDP), a fundamental fluid dynamics-based combined pressure-flow index.

Methods: We hypothesize that CDP will result in improved clinical outcomes in comparison to FFR.