Assistant Professor Myunghee Kim receives three grants for robotic research
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Assistant Professor Myunghee Kim recently received three grants – one continuation and two new grants – for a total of $480,336 to support research in the Rehabilitation Robotics Laboratory.
Her lab aims to design and optimize wearable robots to enhance mobility and augment user capabilities. These devices have shown great potential. However, the unknown interaction between technology and humans poses challenges, for both the user and operator.
For instance, while a robot can assist, the same robot can also inadvertently hinder. Kim’s work seeks to decipher these complexities, studying co-adaptive strategies and designing customized assistance methods in wearable robots such as robotic ankle-foot prostheses and orthoses. She is also exploring efficient robot operation techniques for potential therapeutic applications. The grants will support these research endeavors, propelling advancements in assistive and rehabilitation robotics.
Robot and user synergy – human-robot co-adaptation in wearable technology
The U.S. Department of Veterans Affairs (VA) has granted Kim and her team a new grant titled Mapping ankle-foot stiffness to socket comfort and pressure using a robotic emulator platform to personalize prosthesis function via human-in-the-loop optimization. She will work with Dr. Matthew Major (Co-PI) at the VA and Northwestern University.
The research spotlights the interplay between prosthetic ankle-foot stiffness, user-reported comfort, and socket-interface pressure, aiming to optimize below-knee prostheses.
“Central to our research is user comfort—a pivotal factor of prosthesis wear and movement. Our first-year goal includes defining these relationships and testing a robot-based optimization approach for comfort and interface pressure,” she said.
To accomplish their goal, the team will use their novel robotic emulator that permits rapid, controlled, and high-resolution adjustments to prosthetic ankle-foot stiffness. Then they will adjust the prosthetic stiffness in real-time while capturing user data for analysis.
The researchers will use the short-term findings as a guideline to adjust comfort for veterans using a prosthesis. The long-term outcomes will pave the way for self-adjusting prostheses based on real-time pressure biofeedback, ensuring lasting comfort and utilization.
Robot and user synergy – personalizing veteran prosthetics via robotic emulator
The U.S. Department of Veterans Affairs (VA) has granted Kim and her team a new grant titled Mapping ankle-foot stiffness to socket comfort and pressure using a robotic emulator platform to personalize prosthesis function via human-in-the-loop optimization. She will work with Matthew Major at the VA and Northwestern University.
The research spotlights the interplay between prosthetic ankle-foot stiffness, user-reported comfort, and socket-interface pressure, aiming to optimize below-knee prostheses.
“Central to our research is user comfort—a pivotal factor of prosthesis wear and movement. Our first-year goal includes defining these relationships and testing a robot-based optimization approach for comfort and interface pressure,” she said.
To accomplish their goal, the team will use their novel robotic emulator that permits rapid, controlled, and high-resolution adjustments to prosthetic ankle-foot stiffness. Then they will adjust the prosthetic stiffness in real-time while capturing user data for analysis.
The researchers will use the short-term findings as a guideline to adjust comfort for veterans using a prosthesis. The long-term outcomes will pave the way for self-adjusting prostheses based on real-time pressure biofeedback, ensuring lasting comfort and utilization.
Robot and operator dynamics: leveraging AR for enhanced operation experience
The Korea Institute of Robot and Convergence awarded Kim a new grant titled A comparative evaluation of the augmented reality-based and traditional user manual methods for robot operation.
Under this grant, the team aims to explore how augmented reality helps operators manage the systems using robotic technology. The primary goal is to identify an effective method for training and monitoring automated system use.
“We hypothesize that wearable augmented reality will improve automated system operation, as evidenced by factors such as training time, accuracy, and execution time, along with reduced stress and effort levels,” Kim said. “To test this, we will compare the efficacy of various formats — book manual, portable display, and wearable augmented reality — in guiding robot operation.”