CPS: Synergy: Cyber-Enabled Repetitive Motions in Rehabilitation

The project aims to advance both foundations and enabling technologies in the field of human-machine systems, with a focus on exercise and rehabilitation machines. A human interacting with an advanced (actively-controlled) exercise machine is the ultimate cyber-physical system due to the presence of multi-level loop closures, large-scale, coupled musculoskeletal dynamics, conflicting objectives between human vs. machine controllers, uncertain dynamics and limited sensing.

The working hypothesis is that physical training for athletic conditioning, rehabilitation or special environments (microgravity) can be improved (or made possible) by endowing machines with optimality-seeking adaptive behavior.

The poster summarizes progress in the component disciplines of biomechanical modeling, control, self-optimization, state estimation and real-time field testing of a completed advanced exercise machine prototype. The project has reached several milestones which include successful completion and operation of a powered rowing machine with programmable impedance, advances in musculoskeletal state estimation, stable feeback control of human linkages driven by muscles and progress in extremum seeking based approaches to machine self-optimization for human performance maximization.