Mechanical Engineering Commons^™

Control Of A Human Arm Robotic Unit Using Augmented Reality And Optimized Kinematics, Carlo Canezo

USF Tampa Graduate Theses and Dissertations

There are more than 350000 amputees in the US who suffer loss of functionality in their daily living activities, and roughly 100000 of them are upper arm amputees. Many of these amputees use prostheses to compensate part of their lost arm function, including power prostheses. Research on 6-7 degree of freedom powered prostheses is still relatively new, and most commercially available powered prostheses are typically limited to 1 to 3 degrees of freedom. Due to the myriad of possible options for various powered protheses from different manufacturers, each configuration is governed by a distinct control scheme typically specific to the …

Utilizing A Computational Model For The Design Of A Passive Dynamic Walker, Craig Alan Honeycutt

USF Tampa Graduate Theses and Dissertations

Recent interest in using passive dynamic walkers (PDWs) for gait rehabilitation studies has presented a need for a robust, easily built mechanism. Unfortunately, these passive robots are hypersensitive to many variables outside of the usual design considerations that are studied when constructing them. By accentuating previous failures instead of suppressing them, this thesis presents a number of problematic situations commonly experienced when testing and tuning a PDW.

Further, through a complete design of a 4-legged PDW with knees, simple design axioms brought about by myself and others are put into a practical context and applied directly to design. This thesis …