Co-evolution of Morphology and Control of a Wearable Robot for Human Locomotion Assistance Exploiting Variable Impedance Actuators

The basic idea underlying this research is that the performances of wearable robots (WR) might be improved by optimizing the dynamics of the system comprised of the robot and the human body wearing it. This problem is not amenable to analytical investigations, and it asks for suitable numerical techniques able to simultaneously account for both robot mechanical structure dynamics and control laws. This paper presents on-going research efforts oriented to demonstrate a novel methodology for the design of an active lower limbs orthosis.