Audrow Nash – Robohub: Recent Episodes
None
In this episode, Audrow Nash speaks to Dan Mantz, who is the CEO of the Robotics Education and Competition (REC) Foundation. The REC Foundation is a nonprofit that works with VEX Robotics to build interest in STEM related career opportunities. Dan speaks about the different competitions REC facilitates, why REC is a nonprofit, how REC […]
In this episode, Audrow Nash speaks to Maria Telleria, who is a co-founder and the CTO of Canvas. Canvas makes a drywall finishing robot and is based in the Bay Area. In this interview, Maria talks about Canvas’s drywall finishing robot, how Canvas works with unions, Canvas’s business model, and about her career path. Episode […]
In this episode, Audrow Nash speaks to Dan O’Mara, who is the founder and COO of Circuit Launch and Mechlabs. Circuit Launch is a space for hardware entrepreneurs to work in Oakland, California, and Mechlabs is a project-based course to learn robotics. This interview is mostly about Mechlabs, but talks about the origins of Circuit […]
In this episode, Audrow Nash speaks to Afreez Gan, who is the founder and CEO of MangDang; MangDang is a Chinese startup that makes Minipupper, an open source robot dog that uses the Robot Operating System (ROS). Minipupper was inspired by and built with lessons learned from the Stanford Pupper, an open source robot dog. […]
In this episode, Audrow Nash speaks to Dayo McIntosh, who is the founder of Yateou; Yateou is an early-stage startup that makes wellness products and has a customer facing robot, ADE, that personalizes customer orders. Dayo speaks about what motivated her to start Yateou, how she uses the robot arm, ADE, and about her plans […]
In this episode, Audrow Nash speaks to Helen Greiner, CEO at Tertill, which makes a small solar powered weeding robot for vegetable gardens. The conversation begins with an overview of Helen’s previous robotics experience, including at as a student at MIT, Co-founder at iRobot, Founder and CEO at CyPhyWorks, and in advising government research in […]
In this episode, Audrow Nash speaks to Christian Fritz, CEO and founder of Transitive Robotics. Transitive Robotics makes software for building full stack robotics applications. In this conversation, they talk about how Transitive Robotic’s software works, their business model, sandboxing for security, creating a marketplace for robotics applications, and web tools, in general. Episode Links […]
In this episode, Audrow Nash speaks to Tim Chung, Program Manager in the Tactical Technology Office at the Defense Advanced Research Projects Agency (DARPA), on the DARPA Subterranean (SubT) Challenge. The SubT Challenge is a robotics challenge that aims to develop innovative technologies that would augment operations underground. In this conversation, they talk about the […]
In this episode, Audrow Nash speaks to Steve Macenski, who is the Open Source Robotics Engineering Lead at Samsung Research America. Steve leads the Nav2 project, which is an open source robot navigation framework. In this conversation, they talk about the problem and challenges of robot navigation, how Nav2 works at a high level, hybrid […]
In this episode, Audrow Nash speaks to Matt Robinson, Program Manager for ROS-Industrial Americas at the Southwest Research Institute. ROS Industrial is a group that seeks to help industrial users, for example factories, leverage ROS and its ecosystem. In this conversation, they talk about Matt’s background, the need for the ROS-Industrial group and what problems […]
In this episode, Audrow Nash speaks to Charles Brian Quinn (aka, CBQ), CEO and a Co-Founder of Greenzie. Greenzie make an autonomous driving system for commercial lawn mowers. We talk about Greenzie’s autonomous mowing system, how Greenzie has worked with manufacturers to up-fit their system into commercial mowers, how Greenzie does dog-fooding, safety and standards, […]
In this episode, Audrow Nash interviews Brett Aldrich, author of SMACC and CEO of Robosoft AI. Robosoft AI develops and maintains SMACC and SMACC2, which are event-driven, behavior state machine libraries for ROS 1 and ROS 2, respectively. Brett explains SMACC, its origins, other strategies for robot control such as behavior trees, speaks about the […]
In this episode, Audrow Nash speaks to Youssef Benmokhtar, CEO of GelSight, a Boston-based company that makes high resolution tactile sensors for several industries. They talk about how GelSight’s tactile sensors work, GelSight’s new collaboration with Meta AI (formerly, Facebook AI) to manufacture a low cost touch sensor called DIGIT, on the digitization of touch, […]
In this episode, Audrow Nash speaks to Jason Richards, CEO at DaxBot. DaxBot makes a charismatic robot for food delivery. Jason speaks on their delivery robot, their crowdfunding campaign, DaxBot’s revenue model, working with lawmakers to have robots on the sidewalks, and Jason teases their realtime operating system, DaxOS. Episode Links Download the episode Jason’s […]
In this episode, Audrow Nash speaks to Tobias Holmes, Quality Assurance Manager at Blue River Technologies. Blue River uses computer vision and robotics in agriculture and was acquired by John Deere in 2017. Tobias speaks about herbicide resistance, spraying weeds, quality assurance and testing on hardware, and on encouraging kids to learn robotics. Episode […]
In this episode, Audrow Nash interviews Erik Schluntz, co-founder and CTO of Cobalt Robotics, which makes a security guard robot. Erik speaks about how their robot handles elevators, how they have humans-in-the-loop to help their robot make decisions, robot body language, and gives advice for entrepreneurs. Episode Links Cobalt’s website Erik’s website Video introducing the […]
In this episode, Audrow Nash speaks with Melonee Wise, former CEO of Fetch Robotics and current VP of Robotics Automation at Zebra Technologies. Melonee speaks about the origin of Fetch Robotics, her experience at Willow Garage, her experience being acquired by Zebra Technologies, challenges in the warehouse setting, on autonomous cars, and on the future […]
In this episode, Audrow Nash interviews Adrian Macneil, Co-founder and CEO of Foxglove. Foxglove makes Foxglove Studio, an open source visualization and debugging tool for robotics. Adrian speaks about the origin of Foxglove, Foxglove’s business model, web and robotics, and gives advice to those interested in getting more involved in robotics. Episode links Download the […]
In this episode, Audrow Nash interviews Dave Coleman, Chief Executive Officer at PickNik Robotics. Dave speaks at a high level about what MoveIt is and what problems it helps roboticists solve, they talk about supervised autonomy, including a collaboration with NASA and MoveIt Studio, and Dave talks about MoveIt 3.0. Episode links Download the […]
In this episode, Audrow Nash interviews Ryan Gariepy, Chief Technology Officer of both Clearpath Robotics and OTTO Motors. Ryan speaks about the origin of Clearpath, how Clearpath focuses on making reliable robots, and the future of robotics. Episode links Download the episode Ryan Gariepy’s LinkedIn Clearpath Robotics OTTO Motors Subscribe YouTube Apple Podcasts Spotify […]
Eric Diller on the design, control, and manufacture of micro-scale surgical robotic devices.
We catch up with some of our former and current volunteers on their involvement in the podcast and on their careers.
Catharina Vesterager Smedegaard with a new take on the novelty effect in human-robot interaction
Brad Hayes on how why collaboration may at times be preferable to full autonomy and automation and how human naration can be used to help robots learn from demonstration.
Zhuoran Zhang on robotic manipulators and computer vision techniques to assist artificial insemination
Brian Gerkey on a set of software libraries and tools for building robot application and on a 3D robotics simulator
Bilge Mutlu on the design space, the evaluation space, and how features are used within a context for human-robot interaction.
Bernt Børnich on Eve, including it's motors, direct force control, and how they plan to work with researchers.
Dylan Glas on ERICA's design, the uncanny valley, and on research studies that ERICA's been involved in.
Ian Bernstein on the design and features of a small mobile robot designed for developers.
Dor Skuler on how the robot infers context and changes its behavior accordingly, and how its behavior is adapted over time.
Amy Loutfi on how semantics representations can be used to help robots reason about the world.
Jaime Fernández Fisac on learning how to control robots while keeping them from hurting themselves or others.
Mobile research platforms, modular agricultural robot, and a quadrupedal robot for inspection
Open source unmanned aerial vehicles, a robot to help pickup toys, and robots to inspect sewers.
A gaze tracking framework, making inferences from human behavior in autonomous cars, and mirroring forces without force sensors at IROS 2018.
Caitlyn Clabaugh on the difficulties and opportunities of deploying robots in peoples' homes.
Robert Williamson derives a mathematical formulation of ethics and talks about the cost of fairness.
Amruta Moktali on Salesforce Analytics' data-pipeline, including how to avoid bias and select as actions.
Magnus Egerstedt on a way for anyone interested in swarm robotics to test their ideas on hardware.
Chris McCool on computer vision for plant classification, and Chris Lehnert on a clever way to harvest sweet peppers.
Shuo Yang on a robotics first-person shooter competition designed to get people excited about robotics.
Juxi Leitner on the robot that won the 2017 Amazon picking challenge, and CSIRO on hexapod robots.
Leitner speaks about the Amazon Picking challenge, a challenge to advance the state of robotic grasping, and their robot which won the challenge in 2017. Their robot is similar to a cartesian 3D printer in form and uses either a suction cup or a pinch gripper for grabbing objects. Their robot has a depth camera and uses a digital scale to determine if an object has been picked up successfully. Leitner discusses what their team did differently from other teams that helped them win the competition.
Panitz, Wilson, and Brett speak about their hexapod robots. Their hexapods are for several purposes, such as environmental monitoring and remote inspection. They choose to use hexapods because they are statically stable. They discuss the design of their hexapods and how research works at CSIRO.
Sangin Park on exoskeletons to help factory workers, people with paraplegia, and soldiers.
Michael Laskey on training robots to fold bedsheets (and other things) through imitation learning.
Andrea Bajcsy and Dylan Losey on a method for teaching robots through physical interaction.
Maja Matarić on robots with the ability to help people through individual non-contact assistance in convalescence, rehabilitation, training, and education.
Helen Huang on improving a users experience with a prosthetic through online learning of control parameters
Robots for education, painting tall buildings, machining large parts, and environmental monitoring.
Robohub Podcast has launched a campaign on Patreon! If you don’t know, Robohub Podcast is a biweekly podcast about robotics. Our goal is to explore global robotics through interviews with experts, both in academia and industry. In our interviews, we discuss technical topics (how things work, design decisions), entrepreneurship (lessons learned, business models, ownership), and anything we […]
I am happy to announce that Robots Podcast will be renamed to “Robohub Podcast“. This name change is to avoid confusion about how the podcast and Robohub relate, a question we frequently get. The answer is that they are part of the same effort to connect the global robotics community to the world — and they […]
Katsu Yamane on robot design at Disney, a robot simulator used by Disney's animators, and becoming an “Imagineer.”
Roman Luchin on robotics a development platform between Lego Mindstorms and an embedded platform.
The 2016 IEEE/RSJ International Conference on Intelligent Robots and Systems (IROS) took place in October, in Daejeon, Korea. IROS is an annual robotics conference that seeks to “explore the frontier of science and technology in intelligent robots and smart machines, and to stimulate innovative ideas, exchange technological perspectives and assess future directions in the field of intelligent robots […]
In this episode, Audrow Nash interviews Hasier Larrea, Founder and CEO of Ori Systems and MSc candidate at the MIT Media Lab, about robotics used to transform personal spaces. Larrea discusses how the world is urbanizing and how new space paradigms are needed to accommodate this shift. He proposes robotic furniture that allows for what is not being used to be hidden, such as a desk or a bed. Larrea discusses the robotic systems, how these systems will be integrated into existing infrastructure, and the future or Ori Systems.
Below is Larrea’s TEDxCambridge talk:
Hasier Larrea
Hasier Larrea is an engineer and designer at the MIT Media Lab. He holds a Bachelors and Masters Degree in Mechanical Engineering. Hasier leads the Architectural Robotics research area at the Media Lab, which focuses on creating a new generation of hyper efficient and responsive urban spaces. His team is developing the robotic tools that allow traditional architectural and furniture elements to transform and intelligently connect to the world around us. His work on the CityHome and CityOffice has been featured in The New York Times, Time, Fast Company, Wired, and TechCrunch among others. His creative and entrepreneurial interests help translate the Lab’s envisioning, inventing, and designing approach into manifesting the ideal smart city from researchers’ minds to the streets of tomorrow.
Links
- Download mp3 (15.4 MB)
- Ori Systems’s homepage
- Subscribe to Robots using iTunes
- Subscribe to Robots using RSS
In this episode, Audrow Nash interviews Edson Prestes, Professor at Federal University of Rio Grande do Sul and an organizer of the Humanitarian Robotics and Automation Technology Challenge (HRATC) 2016 competition. The HRATC competition challenges teams around the world to develop methods of controlling robots to detect land mines in large open environments.
According to the UN Mine Action Service, landmines kill 15,000–20,000 people every year (mostly children) and maim countless more across 78 countries. Demining efforts cost US 300–1000 USD per mine, and, for every 5000 mines cleared, one person is killed and two are injured. Thus, clearing post-combat regions of landmines has proven to be a difficult, risky, dangerous and expensive task with enormous social implications for civilians.
Edson Prestes
Edson Prestes received his B.Sc. degree in Computer Science(CS) from the Federal University of Pará (UFPa), Brazil, in 1996 and M.Sc. and Ph.D. in CS from the Federal University of Rio Grande do Sul (UFRGS), Brazil, in 1999 and 2003, respectively. He is a CNPq Productivity Fellow (Brazilian National Council for Scientific and Technological Development) for his contribution to Brazilian Scientific Progress. Edson is Professor at UFRGS, since 2005, and Head of ϕ-Robotics Research Group.
Links
- Download mp3 (11.1 MB)
- Competition Website
- Subscribe to Robots using iTunes
- Subscribe to Robots using RSS
In this episode, Audrow Nash interviews several researchers presenting their work at the Robotics Science and Systems (RSS) 2016 conference in Ann Arbor, Michigan.
Audrow speaks with Gangyuan Jing from Cornell University about modular robotics; Rico Jonschkowski from Technical University of Berlin about lessons from last year’s Amazon picking challenge, which his team won; Matthew Gombolay from MIT about software to help nurses coordinate; and Dorsa Sadigh from UC Berkeley about developing human-like behavior for autonomous cars.
Links:
- Download mp3 (9.7 MB)
- Link to RSS 2016 homepage
- Subscribe to Robots using iTunes
- Subscribe to Robots using RSS
In this episode, Audrow Nash interviews Ekaterina Bereziy, Founder and CEO of ExoAtlet, about exoskeletons for the disabled and for rehabilitation.
Transcript below.
The ExoAtlet Exoskeleton assists people with full or partial lower body paralysis, as well as people with muscle weakness to perform a walking gait. This has been shown to improve blood pressure, decrease muscles and bone degeneration, and prevent urological diseases and disorders. In addition to walking, the ExoAtlet exoskeleton can be used to go up and down stairs. Lastly, ExoAtlet is experimenting with using electrodes to stimulate the contraction of people’s muscles as a way of improving their fitness.
ExoAtlet is one of many robotics companies working with Skolkovo, an innovation cluster based in Moscow, Russia. Skolkovo provides these companies with resources and expertise to encourage their success.
Below is the video of a man walking down the aisle to be married in an ExoAtlet Exoskeleton.
Ekaterina Bereziy
Ekaterina Bereziy is the Founder and CEO of ExoAtlet. She studied Mechanics and Mathematics at Lomonosov Moscow State University and has a Master’s in Business Administration from the Russian Presidential Academy of National Economy and Public Administration.
Links:
- Download mp3 (15.9 MB)
- Link ExoAtlet’s webpage
- Link to Skolkovo’s Robotics webpage
- Subscribe to Robots using iTunes
- Subscribe to Robots using RSS
This transcript has been edited for clarity.
Audrow: Hi, welcome to Robots Podcast, can you introduce yourself?
Ekaterina: My name is Ekaterina Berez. I am the co-founder of ExoAtlet, an exoskeleton for rehabilitation.
Audrow: Can you tell me a bit about ExoAtlet?
Ekaterina: ExoAtlet started at 2014. We developed our project for 2 years, but that is not the only time that we had together. The team joined with this type of development 15 years ago. ExoAtlet is the result of our investigations from 15 years. Now, we have the first version of the exoskeleton that provides the rehabilitation for people with their injuries. The next generation of ExoAtlet will provide the possibility to work for people after strokes.
Audrow: You mentioned the team has been working for 15 years. Where has this taken place?
Ekaterina: In the Damascus State University laboratory, a mechanical and robotic laboratory. We developed a lot of different kind of robots, and they started up the World Festival of Robotics for students and for PhDs. They worked for different kind of system controls for wheels robots and for walking robots. The exoskeleton was one of the ideas that they had for this for years. As the technical solutions have been providing good for making the kind of provides so the ideas to develop the exoskeleton for this exact idea (like rehabilitation) has been implemented and we started the company and conducting it like a commercial product.
Audrow: What stage of development are you currently at? Do you have users?
Ekaterina: We finished the certification process in the Russian market, so it means that we have the certified product that we start to sell 2 months ago. It’s the first product that we developed, but we have the second one that is on R&D stage. It will be more complicated or with the more complicated system control that provides the initiation of the movement. When the person can initiate by his own leg, the movement of the ExoAtlet. It provides the help only to make a step. The person controls it by his own muscles. It’s a great idea, and I mean that it’s a great implementation of an idea. The solution is very interesting. We will implement the control of the power of engines. It means that we will provide MDs to control-
Audrow: What is NMD?
Ekaterina: MD, just medical doctors. We will provide for medical doctors through their implication that we will help them to decrease their assistance of the ExoAtlet for the patients who can work, who can already make steps by themselves. To provide them less help. Then to make them work during the training.
Audrow: Almost like an exercise or rehabilitation. Now, about Skolkovo, how you are related to them?
Ekaterina: Skolkovo Foundation is the government fund that provides help for startups. We started to the member of Skolkovo in 2014 as we started up the company. We are working on this Skolkovo robotic sensor now in the territory of this center.
Audrow: That territory is basically a campus that startups work at?
Ekaterina: Yeah, it looks like a campus and the robotics startups have facilities to make engineering product types, and work with equipment to try and prove some concepts. Also, Skolkovo has their IP center that helps us a lot with our intellectual property and to issue patents. Skolkovo provides a lot of services for startups.
Now they have good infrastructure for the kind of startups who has a great idea, but not a lot of stuff to have goods or to have the specialist for each kind of idea, for implementation. I mean, for example, the PR support is one of the most important things for startups, because it’s necessary to get feedback from the market, and to involve the development process from the market, people who are close for example, in order to implement this idea in real life.
The PR solutions are really cool. And for us it was helpful. Some key medical doctors work with us now, and who made very important clinical trials for us. We have a connection with them, because of the PR support of Skolkovo team. Also, we need funding. It’s investors who can provide their investments for developing the product. Skolkovo has their own Skolkovo fund that is government money. It’s a grant money that they can provide the startups to support some ideas that are very innovative. Maybe too much innovative for the venture capitalist. Skolkovo provides the grant money for the first stage of development to prove this kind of concepts, and next step is to invest. It’s great support.
Audrow: Would you describe the ExoAtlet exoskeleton?
Ekaterina: The first version of ExoAtlet is the exoskeleton for rehabilitation people with the spinal cord injury. We make clinical trials with different kinds of level of spinal cord injury even with very high level. It works. Now, we have 2 models. There is one for hospitals, and for working for medical doctors with the patients, with the different kind of patients. I mean with the height of 160 centimeters.
Audrow: Okay, so about 5’2 to 6’2.
Ekaterina: The weight is about 100 kilos, maybe up to 120 kilos of the patient for hospitals to use. Another model is for personal using at home. The ExoAtlet is adjustable, it’s easy to fix the exact lenses of the part of legs.
Audrow: What does it look like, before we talk about adjusting legs.
Ekaterina: It’s just like the external skeleton. External metal parts that fixes to the legs and to the upper part of the body. With the cells that you can put in your shoes and the person can put it on in a sitting position.
Audrow: It has rigid components that go along with the legs on the outside of the leg?
Ekaterina: Yes, exactly.
Audrow: Then a foot insert that goes into the sole or goes with the sole of your shoe. There is a component that the user wears that’s sitting about at their lower back?
Ekaterina: Yes.
Audrow: They are strapped in by various straps that you pull? Kind of like snowboard boot straps.
Ekaterina: Yes, it looks like the snowboard boot straps. It’s very easy to strap it and fix it.
Audrow: You mentioned adjustable.
Ekaterina: Yes. It’s adjustable. We have a lot of adjustments because all people have different measurements.
Audrow: How does this exoskeleton compare to the exoskeletons of similar companies?
Ekaterina: Most of the skeleton for rehabilitation tried to solve the same problem. It’s to give an easy way to stand up, to start the walking movement, and provide walking steps to speed up the rehabilitation process. The differences in engineering solution, in some plugins, and in that way the exoskeleton works. I mean some of them, for example, have the initiation of the movement. It means that the patient with the not completely damaged spinal cord can initiate the moment. Or, for example, some of the exoskeletons can’t help with standing up to a totally disabled person. It means that they don’t have good parts, or good motors to help the person to stand.
They can make movements and make steps when the person is already in vertical position. Most of the exoskeleton needs crutches. It’s because the patient using the exoskeleton needs to keep their balance. The only way to keep their balance is to have the third points that you can get with a crutch.
Audrow: In our conversation earlier you mentioned you can use your exoskeleton on stairs?
Ekaterina: Yes. Normally in the rehabilitation process medical doctors don’t use stairs, but if we see or if we talk about the people of the stroke, for them they are going up and down stairs. It’s one of the exercises that improves and speeds up the rehabilitation process. Also for the person using it we need to go up and down the stairs because we have a lot of stairs in our surroundings. Normally to go out of the apartment you need to go down the stairs. If we talk about the personal use for people who, for example, has a totally damaged spinal cord, it means that it’s rather difficult to have a hope to reconstruct to start working by themselves.
It means that this kind of exoskeleton will provide them help in walking. Of course, we need to go up and down the stairs and stairs are different with the different heights of the steps, and it means that you should adjust the height of the step according to the stairs. It’s a very important thing.
Audrow: Is this something that the user needs to adjust or is there any sensing onboard that tells how high the steps are by itself, and then adjusts how large of the step it will have to take?
Ekaterina: Now it has sensors, but it works with the stairs, but sometimes you need just to step towards the obstacle. It means there are different kinds of obstacles, and sometimes you need to set up yourself like a pilot, the exact height to make a step. The situations are different. We have a variety of possible adjustments.
Audrow: The step parts and those types of things. To step higher or lower, further, shorter.
Ekaterina: Yeah. Of course, different people have different ways of walking. Some of us have very high steps. For example, normally for us to make high steps, but others make very short and low steps. We can adjust it, and not with the program is plug in the computer and do it once and for years. Now you can adjust exact minutes just by changing parameters in the application.
Audrow: Now, what kind of actuators are on the exoskeleton? It has electric motors?
Ekaterina: Yes.
Audrow: Where are they? Tell me a bit about them.
Ekaterina: They are in the upper parts of the leg.
Audrow: They are at the hip and the knee, correct?
Ekaterina: The knee yes, but they’re just a little bit higher. It works, yes. It moves with the knee joint and the hip joint, so 4 of them, because we have 4 joints. It works with batteries that are set up also onboard. It’s about 6 hours that you can walk.
Audrow: That is a long time. About 6 hours of regular use?
Ekaterina: Yes. Just walking on the normal surfaces. If of course if you will stand up and sit down for 6 hours batteries needs more taxing. You need to charge it.
Audrow: Yes. For sure. What kind of sensors does the exoskeleton have?
Ekaterina: It’s a lot of sensors that helps to get diverse composition.
Audrow: Skill accelerometers and gyroscopes to do some sort of status on this?
Ekaterina: Yeah. We have all of them, and we have some sensors for initiation to get information that it will be initiation of movement by their leg.
Audrow: Would that force sensors?
Ekaterina: It’s force sensors and mind sensors.
Audrow: The mind sensors are very interesting, but the force sensors, where are they in the exoskeleton? Is it on the feet?
Ekaterina: It’s on the feet, yes. It’s on the strips.
Audrow: On the strips; what do you mean?
Ekaterina: I mean that it’s onboard of the ExoAtlet.
Audrow: It’s on the component like along the legs? Sensing the amount twerk at the motor, at each joint basically? So what do you use that information for?
Ekaterina: For system control. To make more comfortable for a person, because when you wear anything that provides some movement you need to be comfortable. It’s one of the great problem how to provide comfort for person that can’t do specific moments. It’s huge that should fit well to make the comfortable moments.
Audrow: You also use the 4 sensors, so the ones in the feet in this kind of thing or the ones in the feet to help the user to walk by themselves, correct? You determine where the weight is loaded and then you decided if you can step or not? Is this the approach?
Ekaterina: It works like this. We have mind stimulation system also.
Audrow: I want to get to that after, but just to see if I understand the force sensors it’s basically if I have my weight on my right leg then I know I can move my left leg kind of thing. The force sensor would determine that I have my weight on my right leg, so then my left leg moves. Is this how it works?
Ekaterina: One of the solutions can be like this. We have a little bit different solution. It does matter. This kind of technical details they are very our specifics. This kind of idea can work. It means that you need to make the system control, but will provide the most natural pattern of walking. From bio-mechanical point of view you can do it like a normal person. This is the goal. There are different kinds of system controls that use their data from sensors, from their voice sensors, from their food on these trips, on the different points of the leg, because it means that the angles and so on. You can get the exact information of the movement that is in the second, and provide by the drives the next phase of movement.
Audrow: Electromyogram sensors sense the electric potential on the skin, and this potential increases when things like a muscle flexes. If I flex my muscle we can detect this with an electromyogram, a myogram sensor on it. You are using this for control of the exoskeleton as well?
Ekaterina: No, we use the myostimulation systems. It’s a multiple control system. It’s for stimulating, for additional stimulation of muscles. For example, who have the people who have damaged spinal, completely damaged spinal cord, we can provide them walking, but we can’t make their muscles work during this process, because their spinal cord is completely damaged, and there is no signal. It means that we can stimulate their legs muscles, and it’s like the stimulation of the normal walking process of muscles during the walking.
Audrow: Are you electrocuting the muscle in order to stimulate it?
Ekaterina: Yeah. We put on the skin the electrodes, and we will provide their electrical nodes to the muscles through the skin. It makes muscles work.
Audrow: It’s like when you are shocked. When you get shocked somehow, and all of your muscles contract. It’s like that kind of thing, but you are using those deliberately to help the user to walk?
Ekaterina: Yeah. It doesn’t help to the walking process, but it helps muscles to reconstruct their function, because we provide the signal, the electro stimulation signal to exact muscle that must work on this phase of walking.
Audrow: How much voltage are you applying to the, I mean is it allowed? Does it hurt?
Ekaterina: No. It doesn’t hurt. It can be just from the very low that you as a normal person would never feel, but the muscle will be on the strong physical condition. It’s adjustable. It’s there. It’s one of the very complicated parts of physical therapy. It’s normally implemented during physical therapy programs. Now medical doctors use it in the position when the person laid on the sofa for example, and they do this kind of mind stimulation without movements. We implemented to the exoskeleton, and combined it with the steps. We use the information of the angles from the joints and provide to the system, the control mind stimulation and elector signals.
Audrow: Has this approach been proven to be beneficial to do the steps in combination with the electrical stimulation? Is it proven or have you found that the results of doing these 2 things is better than the result of doing either separate?
Ekaterina: Now we have a big investigation. We have the clinical trials that the results of it will be comparing between the ExoAtlet with mind stimulation system. It will be interesting result.
Audrow: What was the second one?
Ekaterina: Local Mob. It’s their rehabilitation. They are very big and very famous rehabilitation equipment. It’s very expensive, so it costs about some hundred thousands dollars. Normally it’s on the rehabilitation centers, because it’s for the big one. It’s with the treadmill and their exoskeleton implemented in this system. It’s proved, and they were a lot of researches and clinical trials that proved this kind of robotic mechanical therapy. In Russian market we have about 75 such kind of machines. Now we have the clinical trials. The idea is to compare their results of 2 weeks of training for patients who can walk a little bit, who can do some steps.
It’s not the people with the completely damaged spinal cord, but it’s the spinal cord damaged injury people who feel their legs, and who can do some steps. We will measure the differences of improvements.
Audrow: I see, and use that to determine the validity of the method. That makes sense. What are the future steps for ExoAtlet?
Ekaterina: We will develop the next version. We are working on it. We are on R&D process, the ExoAtlet for people of the stroke. Then the cerebral palsy is one of the biggest problems that is around the world. We will provide to different exoskeletons to the market.
Audrow: What would you think would be a timeline for this?
Ekaterina: We plan to make a presentation of the ExoAtlet for people of the stroke next summer. It will be summer of 2017. For children with the cerebral palsy it will be the next generation maybe in 2 or 3 years.
Audrow: Do you have any stories or anecdotes of people using your exoskeletons?
Ekaterina: We have one exoskeleton that has been implemented in hospital in the north city of Russia. There is one patient who walks with it almost every day and use it almost every day. One of the really interesting stories that it was his own idea. It wasn’t like a PR idea. He decided to marry, and for him it was very important to stand, but not to sit during this process. He entered the church with his future wife wearing the ExoAtlet and using the ExoAtlet. He made steps with this kind of sound … It’s really so cool. That Saturday morning was very interesting, because he came to his wife, and he provided her his hand and she supported him a little bit, but it was really impressive.
Audrow: Thank you!
In this episode, Audrow Nash interviews Hugh Herr, Director of the Biomechatronics Group at MIT. Herr talks about the accident that led to the amputation of both of his legs below the knee and how this shaped his rock climbing and academic career. Herr also discusses orthoses and exoskeletons developed by his research group, as well as the future of bionic technology.
Transcript below.
Among topics discussed is the lower-body exoskeleton below. This exoskeleton is the first lower-body exoskeleton to decreases the user’s energy expenditure when walking (measured by oxygen consumption). It works by assisting the calf muscle and using the body’s joints, rather than heavy mechanical joints. Hugh Herr says, “Subjects noticed that their legs felt heavier and awkward when they took the exoskeleton off.”
Below is a TED talk Hugh Herr gave in 2014. In this talk, Herr describes disability as a failure of technology, he discusses the design of his own prostheses and his lab’s research, and there is a dance performance by Christian Lightner and Adrianne Haslet-Davis, who lost her lower left leg in the Boston Marathon bombings.
Hugh Herr
His research program seeks to advance technologies that promise to accelerate the merging of body and machine, including device architectures that resemble the body’s musculoskeletal design, actuator technologies that behave like muscle, and control methodologies that exploit principles of biological movement. His methods encompass a diverse set of scientific and technological disciplines, from the science of biomechanics and biological movement control to the design of biomedical devices for the treatment of human physical disability.
His research accomplishments in science and technology have already made a significant impact on physically challenged people. The Transfemoral Quasipassive Knee Prosthesis has been commercialized by Össur Inc., and is now benefiting amputees throughhttp://biomech.media.mit.edu/people-hugh-herr/out the world. In 2006, he founded the company iWalk Inc. to commercialize the Powered Ankle-Foot Prosthesis and other bionic leg devices. Professor Herr’s work impacts a number of academic communities. He has given numerous invited and plenary lectures at international conferences and colloquia, including the IVth World Congress of Biomechanics, the International Conference on Advanced Prosthetics, the National Assembly of Physical Medicine and Rehabilitation, World Economic Forum, Google Zeitgeist, Digital Life Design, and the TEDMED Conference. He is Associate Editor for the Journal of NeuroEngineering and Rehabilitation, and has served as a reviewer for the Journal of Experimental Biology, the International Journal of Robotics Research, IEEE Transactions on Biomedical Engineering, and the Proceedings of the Royal Society: Biological Sciences. He has been invited to participate in joint funding proposals from other universities and corporations, and has served on research review panels including the National Institute of Health, the National Institute on Disability and Rehabilitation, and the Department of Veterans Affairs. In 2007, He was presented with the 13th Annual Heinz Award for Technology, the Economy and Employment. His work has been featured by various national and international media, including Scientific American Frontiers, Technology Review, National Geographic, the History Channel, and CNN.
Links:
- Download mp3 (18.3 MB)
- Link to the Biomechatronics Group’s webpage
- Subscribe to Robots using iTunes
- Subscribe to Robots using RSS
The transcript is edited for clarity.
Hugh Herr:
My name is Hugh Herr and I’m a professor at MIT. I co-direct the Center for Extreme Bionics. I also am the founder of a company called BionX Medical Technologies.
Audrow Nash:
Can you tell me a bit about how you have lost your legs from the knee down?
Hugh Herr:
I was an avid mountain climber. I started mountain climbing when I was seven years old. When I was in my early teenage years I was considered a child prodigy in climbing. When I was seventeen I was out with my climbing partner at the time. Our goal was to climb Mt. Washington in the winter by ascending Huntington’s Ravine, which is about an eight hundred foot, very steep ice wall. We ascended very quickly the eight hundred foot wall, and then decided to continue towards the summit. The weather conditions got worse and worse. Even though we went just five minutes above the head-wall of Huntington Ravine, we were not able to retrace our tracks and we descended the mountain.
By the time we got to tree line it was clear that we had gone off course, but we were stuck at that point. We really didn’t have the rational choice of retracing our tracks and going towards the summit. At that point, wind speeds were so high that one could not even stand. We were forced to go down this ravine system, it’s called the Great Gulf Region. It’s the wilderness side of Mt. Washington. It was there that we spent several days in most extreme bushwhacking that one can imagine. The average depth of snow was to the waist. Sometimes it was to the chest. We were just simply trapped in a white maze.
We dug in when we were not able to move any more out of exhaustion by creating kind of these snow caves. During the day we would walk. We would probably make two miles of progress in a complete kind of marathon effort in the deep snow. We made it within a few miles of the roadway and then couldn’t walk anymore because of severe frostbite. We were later discovered, or found by a person out snowshoeing for the day, and we were plucked from the mountain via helicopter and then treated for severe frostbite and hypothermia.
Audrow Nash:
Then, so from there because of the severe frostbite you had both of your legs amputated from the knee down?
Hugh Herr:
That’s right. After a few months of effort by my medical team to “save” my biological limbs, they were amputated. We were on the mountain late January. My legs were amputated mid-March.
Audrow Nash:
Afterwards, you wanted to return to rock climbing. You were told otherwise, though.
Hugh Herr:
Yeah. I didn’t know what I would be able to do with my new body, and my father said, “If you want to climb, you should climb.” I really had no clear examples of what life would be using prostheses. My limbs are amputated. I went through about a month or two of healing, and then I was fitted with my first pair of artificial limbs. I was shocked at their lack of technological sophistication. They were actually made of plaster of Paris and it was recommended that I not walk without canes or crutches because the limbs might actually break. They were kind of these crazy trainer limbs. The first weekend I went home from the rehabilitation center they didn’t allow me to take my legs because they knew what I was capable of. The next weekend they were stupid enough to allow me to take my legs and I went climbing with my brother, Tony.
Audrow Nash:
How did you begin to adjust your prosthetic limbs for climbing and various purposes?
Hugh Herr:
I quickly abandoned the notion that the limbs needed to look human, and I quickly focused on function. I thought to myself what would be optimal designs for the vertical world of rock and ice climbing. What emerged was a series of different feet for rock and ice surfaces, so feet that could stand on small rock edges the width of a coin, feet that could wedge into rock fissures even where the human foot could not penetrate, feet that could penetrate ice walls. I made my legs exceedingly lightweight to increase my strength to weight ratio. Through design, I was able to etch out a few advantages. There were disadvantages, but I gained enough advantages that it was only twelve months after my limbs were amputated that I was climbing better with artificial limbs than I’d ever achieved with normal biological limbs before the accident.
Audrow Nash:
How did you transition into academia from this, and how did you know that that is the way you should pursue, or continue?
Hugh Herr:
To be honest, the men in my family, my father and brothers and grandfathers, were in the business of construction. Given how uncomfortable artificial limbs were at the time, I couldn’t imagine being on a construction site for the rest of my life. I also couldn’t imagine being on the construction site for the rest of my life. I decided to go to college, which I’d never plan to do. My intent was to be the best climber in the world before the accident. I went to college and I signed up for very basic math courses and computer science courses. I developed an extraordinary passion for the topics and couldn’t stop studying. I just absolutely loved the material. It’s interesting because science and a passion for science and math actually replaced somewhat my passion for climbing mountains.
Audrow Nash:
Then you began to apply what you were learning to your own prostheses with what you were learning? When did you start doing that?
Hugh Herr:
I did have the goal of continuing to design prostheses. The experience of designing new climbing legs and succeeding so wildly beyond everyone’s expectation, including my own, was very inspirational for me. I realized the power of technology to heal, to rehabilitate, even to extend human capability beyond innate capabilities. That was also a clear motivation in my acquisition of knowledge and going back to school. My first patent was obtained, issued very close to the time when I was graduating from undergraduate school in physics. It was on the mechanical interface between the residuum and the artificial limb. The idea was to use fluid bladders in certain configurations. I later proposed to my future MIT advisor that I would build this interface and have actuation pumps and pressure sensing and continually modulate the pressure field around the residuum.
Audrow Nash:
On the spot where the prosthetic limb interfaces with the residual limb is what you’re talking about?
Hugh Herr:
Yes.
Audrow Nash:
So you would use some sort of fluid to make a vacuum so that it would stay very well attached?
Hugh Herr:
Yes, a vacuum offering suspension, but also offering loading support.
Audrow Nash:
Loading support.
Hugh Herr:
A pressure field that would be very comfortable around the end of the limb, enabling a person to walk without discomfort.
Audrow Nash:
Can you tell me a bit about the prostheses that you’re wearing now?
Hugh Herr:
I’m wearing two bionic legs. Both legs have three microprocessors and twelve sensors. The microprocessors are brains, if you will. The devices control a muscle-like actuator that moves and stiffens and powers my synthetic ankles.
Audrow Nash:
What sensors are on board?
Hugh Herr:
The sensors measure position, speed, acceleration, force and temperature, as well as joint position and speed.
Audrow Nash:
What sensing are you doing, contact with the ground?
Hugh Herr:
No. The device has tendon-like series springs, and also a parallel elasticity. The torque sensing is of the torque that the series elastic actuator sees and the parallel spring sees.
Audrow Nash:
I see.
Hugh Herr:
Either one can produce net torque on a joint.
Audrow Nash:
Can you describe how they look a little bit?
Hugh Herr:
They look interesting. There’s two black batteries that sit on top, and there’s black anodized metal shields coming around the ankle. Then inside those shields are all the electronics and then the motor system. Then attached to that is a synthetic foot made of again, black carbon composite.
Audrow Nash:
What kind of grip on the bottom?
Hugh Herr:
I wear the carbon foot, and glued to that carbon foot is a typical rubber that you’d find on the bottom of a shoe.
Audrow Nash:
What kind of battery life?
Hugh Herr:
We get a few thousand fast walking steps. For me and my lifestyle, that’s fine to get through the day. If one wants to walk say, ten thousand steps, one would just take a spare battery or two. The batteries are modular. You just snap them in like a power tool.
Audrow Nash:
I see. How does this compare to other prostheses?
Hugh Herr:
All other foot/ankle prostheses in the world are human powered, meaning the energy of the human attached to them drives the movement. The legs that I’m wearing are bionic. They inject mechanical energy into a person’s stride in a way that’s similar to what the muscles used to do that were lost on amputation.
Audrow Nash:
Can you talk a bit about how they are fit to your residual limbs?
Hugh Herr:
At MIT I have a team of people thinking about fit. What is the nature of comfort? What are the mathematics of comfort? What is the science of comfort? We build mathematical descriptions of the tissues of the ends of the residuum and theories of how the shape of the structure that comes around the residuum and the stiffness of that shape to optimize comfort. Basically, the end of my limb goes into a cup-like device that supports my weight, and so the shape of that cup is critically important to comfort. We mathematically derive that shape, and then we 3D print the structure.
Audrow Nash:
You’re identifying where there are hard and soft spots in the residual limb so that you can match them or match them with their complement, so soft to hard, hard to soft so that it’s more comfortable?
Hugh Herr:
Yeah. Then what’s very complex is the shape, the equilibrium shape of the synthetic skin, if you will. That’s based on tissue, how compliant the tissues are, that shape. Mathematically we understand the compliance of the tissues in all the regions.
Audrow Nash:
What do you mean, compliance of the tissue?
Hugh Herr:
How soft or how stiff they are.
Audrow Nash:
Okay. What about stretch of say, the skin? Does that apply as well?
Hugh Herr:
In a different way. I wear a second skin silicone liner, so the design of that second skin relates to the skin’s strain field, or the amount of stretch in the skin.
Audrow Nash:
I see. Are they attached by this vacuum principle or how would you attach them to the residual limb?
Hugh Herr:
There’s a number of ways to attach. You can have a pin and a lock at the base of the limb. You can have suction. You can have a sleeve that spans from the biological leg across the socket. There’s a number of ways to hold it on.
Audrow Nash:
What have been some challenges in designing this?
Hugh Herr:
The interface. If you ask a thousand persons with limb amputation what’s the number one problem they want solved, probably all thousand would say the mechanical interface, the mechanical attachment. Why? Because it’s uncomfortable. It’s a very, very important problem. It’s a very complex problem because no one understands what comfort is for any device, or there’d be a shoe or a prosthesis. We’re developing that science, and it’s very exciting. We want to be able to produce sockets that are comfortable. We want to produce them fast at low cost.
Audrow Nash:
What are a means of doing this? You 3D print the part. How do you model the residual limb?
Hugh Herr:
We take an MRI image of the limb, and that tells us where the shape of the bones and where the skin is and where the muscles are. We then use robotic palpation tools to compress the tissues and measure displacement speeds and forces, which tell us the fundamental constants of the tissues. We then build a continuum mechanical model. If you have a mathematical description of the biological segment, you can then apply pressure fields. The model will tell you how the tissues deform. Then we define particular tissue deformations that are healthy and comfortable.
Audrow Nash:
Is the goal is to make this cheap and replicable for the general person?
Hugh Herr:
Yeah. My vision of the future is that each human individual will have a digital representation of their body. When they need any type of a bionic device, that digital body will be used to compute an optimal personalized bionic device for the human.
Audrow Nash:
This can refer to clothing as well.
Hugh Herr:
Correct. Clothing, shoes, bras, bike seats, bionic limbs, exoskeletons, neural implants that go inside the body. Everything will be personalized.
Audrow Nash:
Everything is optimized, and this relies heavily on 3D printing or additive manufacturing?
Hugh Herr:
3D printing is a tool. It’s not the dominant science. That is to say, one could build these interfaces with molding processes and not using digital fabrication. Digital fabrication is sometimes nice because it reduces the fabrication frequency, but it’s not necessary. It’s not the secret sauce.
Audrow Nash:
What’s the role of industry and academia in producing these prostheses?
Hugh Herr:
As stated, I’m a professor. The typical model of a professor in the US is they receive some type of grant monies and they conduct research with a team comprising both staff and students. There are inventions. Patents are filed. Patents are owned by the university. The university then licenses the intellectual property to founders of a company. Those founders can be the professors and students that invented, and often that’s the model, the most successful model of translation. In my case that’s exactly what happened. There was patents generated. I’m the inventor. My students are the inventors. A company’s established and then there’s a contractual relationship between the company and the university, licensing the IP within a certain domain of use. That’s what was done with my company, BionX Medical Technologies.
Audrow Nash:
What role does the company play in developing the technology?
Hugh Herr:
At university we do science. We do research that’s publishing. We test hypotheses. We do things that have never been done before, never been tested before. At the company, basically crude prototypes that we build at the university are commercialized. What that means is getting them light enough, most important strong enough, durable enough, manufacturable, at the right price point. Then all the sales and clinical services necessary to distribute that product globally.
Audrow Nash:
What does it look like when someone puts on the BiOM ankle for the first time?
Hugh Herr:
The design in the ankle is biomimetic, inspired by nature, by the human body. The algorithms that are running on these small computers on the ankles control the motor as if the motor were made of muscles and tendon and the whole structure was bone and whatnot. The whole thing moves as if it was made of flesh and bone, even though it’s made of synthetics. Because of that, when it’s fit to a human, the human is used to those dynamics, so there’s little to no training required. Often in minutes the person is saying things like they have their life back, they have their leg back, and they’re either crying out of happiness or laughing out of happiness. It’s fun to go to these fittings, actually.
Audrow Nash:
I’d like to move into talking about exoskeletons. First, would you define what an exoskeleton is and then tell us how it relates to your work with prostheses.
Hugh Herr:
My definition of an exoskeleton is a device that attaches to the body, intimately to the body, that augments physicality. What I mean by augments, it enables a human being to do something that’s beyond natural capability for an innate, healthy body. The word orthoses is a medical term for a robot that attaches to the body that enables a person with a disability or some condition to move more naturally. Exoskeletons are wearable robots that augment.
Audrow Nash:
Can you tell me a bit about metabolic cost as a parameter for designing exoskeletons?
Hugh Herr:
One goal in exoskeletal design is to augment a human by pedal locomotion. An excellent metric of evaluation is the amount of food energy a person requires when using the exoskeleton versus not using the exoskeleton. Why? My view is that if the exoskeleton increases energy levels of the human, the human won’t want to use it. It won’t have sufficient value. It’s a very important metric of evaluation.
Audrow Nash:
Basically they’ll discard it and not use it if the metabolic cost is higher than the task, or higher than it would be to accomplish otherwise?
Hugh Herr:
You know, unless they want to get exercise. If they want to actually be augmented and enhance physicality, no they won’t use it.
Audrow Nash:
How do you measure this?
Hugh Herr:
Typically for aerobic exercise it’s measured by monitoring how much oxygen a person uses when they breathe and how much carbon dioxide is expelled. With those two rates one can compute the calories burned per unit of time.
Audrow Nash:
Would you describe the exoskeleton used to decrease metabolic costs for walking?
Hugh Herr:
The first exoskeleton that was envisioned and published in the world that I’m aware of was in the nineteenth century, over a hundred years ago. It was a Russian inventor called Jagen. His dream was to augment the Russian Army, Russian soldiers. It wasn’t until 2014 that someone succeeded in building an exoskeleton that augments walking and running. My group was the first to accomplish that goal. It’s an exoskeleton that spans the foot and comes up about mid-calf, just below the knee. Fundamentally it’s an artificial calf muscle. The calf muscle is the most important muscle in bi-pedal walking. It supplies about eighty percent of the power to walk. It’s where humans are most inefficient, so the exoskeleton adds an artificial calf muscle and injects energy into the gait like a calf muscle to reduce the metabolic cost of the biological calf.
Audrow Nash:
What does it look like and what kind of actuators are you using?
Hugh Herr:
The actuators are electric based. It looks very interesting. It’s like, this crazy structure, this crazy shoe that goes higher than is normal and has these springy struts that go up on the side of the leg, and then a motor that sits on kind of a shin guard that pulls on that strut and powers movement.
Audrow Nash:
Yes, and so it’s using some sort of tether and you’re pulling that, and that’s how you flex the calf to augment walking?
Hugh Herr:
Flex the ankle, yes.
Audrow Nash:
You’re using the body as its own joint for this. Correct?
Hugh Herr:
It’s very important that exoskeletons are very, very, very light weight. Whenever you add weight to the legs, metabolic cost increases. In an effort to reduce the weight or the mass of the device, we actually use the body’s joints as the bearing instead of putting a synthetic bearing in the device.
Audrow Nash:
What kind of sensing is done with the device?
Hugh Herr:
All the electronics are up high by design so you can walk through a deep, deep puddle of water and not affect the system. We measure positions and speeds and accelerations, essentially. Then from those data we can compute torques, forces, given a model of the structure.
Audrow Nash:
You can infer where the person is in their gait and then determine if you should pull to assist the gap?
Hugh Herr:
Essentially.
Audrow Nash:
Why did you choose to revolve around the ankle?
Hugh Herr:
Again because the calf muscle is the most important muscle in walking.
Audrow Nash:
Are there other advantages to it as well, being that there’s not so much squishy …
Hugh Herr:
Yeah. The shin bone is where the leg is most stiff, most rigid, and it’s a tremendous plate of bone to apply forces on from an exoskeleton.
Audrow Nash:
Can you only use this for walking? Could someone use it for running or other activities?
Hugh Herr:
The device is very versatile. It’s powered, it has smart computation, so yes you can walk, run up and down hills, whatever you want to do. It’s as versatile as the human leg itself.
Audrow Nash:
What kind of efficiency gains are we getting?
Hugh Herr:
There’s a number of peer-reviewed manuscripts. Again, we were the first in 2014 to augment the human in a peer review publication. That first publication, the human subjects were wearing a twenty-three kilogram backpack and we augmented by eight percent. We later conducted a separate study on unloaded humans, just regular walking, and augmented by an average ten percent. The variation is huge, so you have N subjects. Some subjects are as high as almost thirty percent, some are low, and everything in between.
Audrow Nash:
What do you believe creates that variation?
Hugh Herr:
It’s a really interesting question. No one really knows, but everyone in the field has observed this phenomenon, that when you put a single exoskeletal design on N people, you get huge variation. My belief is you take ten people and you could distribute them in terms of athletic capability. Some people have a very smart spinal cord and they can exploit any tool or device very, very quickly. Others are clueless. That’s a possibility where training may be effective to mitigate that variance.
Audrow Nash:
Now, people that use it, what do they say it feels like?
Hugh Herr:
The human body is extraordinary, so a person begins to use it, they very quickly … Initially they feel the energy that it provides, but very quickly the human body gets used to it. Then you take it off and you kind of stumble, and your own biological normal legs feel heavy, awkward and slow. This tells us that wearing bionic structures will just be commonplace in the future, and innate, normal bodies will just be boring.
Audrow Nash:
Now, what kind of upper limit do you think we can get on efficiency with this device?
Hugh Herr:
With the foot/ankle device it’s not known. I would say at least twenty-five percent, but it may be even higher, which is very, very exciting.
Audrow Nash:
Then will you benefit, you think, from augmenting other muscles or other movements?
Hugh Herr:
We don’t know. What’s intriguing is our recent paper on the device. What’s intriguing is when you add exoskeletal torque and power at the ankle, not only do you reduce the power requirements of the biological ankle, but also you reduce the power requirements of the knee and hip. Even though the exoskeleton doesn’t span the knee and hip we nonetheless, reduce muscular effort at those joints tremendously. It begs the question do you really need an exoskeleton that spans the whole leg, or is the foot/ankle sufficient?
Audrow Nash:
Why would you think that it decreases the expenditure at those muscles?
Hugh Herr:
It’s just the dynamics of the system. The body, when you give it power, it uses that power distributively across the entire leg in an optimal way. It’s a new gait. It’s a different gait … than normal.
Audrow Nash:
How does it look compared to normal?
Hugh Herr:
It looks normal to an untrained eye. It doesn’t look like a bizarre walk. It is a distinctly new gait. You give the human energy from a bionic structure and the body quickly figures out how to ultimately use that energy to minimize its own metabolic food energy. That’s what humans are really good at. We’re inherently lazy and we minimize energy really, really well. We’re terrible at detecting high stress levels and probabilities of injury. We injure our knee and we’re surprised. We injure our hip and we’re surprised. An incredible value of exoskeletons is to give the human something that they’re bad at. One class of exoskeletons in the future will be exoskeletons that enable us to do athletic performances without a threat of injury.
Audrow Nash:
How would those work?
Hugh Herr:
I don’t know, but they would have to detect high levels of stress and fatigue in biological structures and then tell the human to stop or to move in a different way. Imagine a world where our top athletes never injure. Imagine the impact to human athletic performance. Performance would just go through the roof, because often what mitigates top performance is injury and recovering from injury and not training harder because you might injure, yada, yada, yada.
Audrow Nash:
What other future applications of exoskeletons do you see?
Hugh Herr:
Another form of augmentation is maintaining one’s inherent physicality independent of age. Imagine a world when you run your best marathon time when you’re sixty, and you’ve been running marathons since the age of fifteen. Why? Because you’re a more skilled athlete. As you age, technology eliminates the impact of age related degeneration by neural implants, maybe by regenerative medicine, maybe by exoskeletons or various forms of augmentation. That’s a very palpable form of augmentation. Most people ethically would be fine with that and most people would be excited about maintaining quality of life as they age.
Audrow Nash:
What are some bottlenecks in exoskeletons? What technological bottlenecks are there?
Hugh Herr:
I’m not sure there are technological bottlenecks. I think that largely the components are sufficient. It’s really a problem with design and architecture. The human machine interaction is something that’s unknown, so putting a bionic structure on a human and adapting its control in real time in a kind of human machine optimization is critically important to the future of this area of design. Imagine putting on a device and you just starting to walk and run and it adjusts its behavior to optimize its performance with you in a collaborative effort.
Audrow Nash:
Is this one of your research interests moving forward?
Hugh Herr:
Absolutely.
Audrow Nash:
What are some of your near-term research goals?
Hugh Herr:
I want to do three things first and foremost. One is I want to advance better muscle-like actuators. Perhaps actuators that are better than biological ones, kind of the engine of BionX. I want to understand electrical interface between the peripheral human nervous system and devices, so how to talk to nerve endings, essentially. I also want to understand how to attach machines to the body mechanically in a comfortable way. Those three innovations will really define bionics in this century. If you solve all three, you’re more or less done. You’ve solved bionics, limb bionics that is.
Audrow Nash:
Thanks for being on Robots Podcast.
Hugh Herr:
Thank you.