Mechanical Engineering Commons^™

Controlled Switching In Kalman Filtering And Iterative Learning Controls, He Li

Masters Theses

“Switching is not an uncommon phenomenon in practical systems and processes, for examples, power switches opening and closing, transmissions lifting from low gear to high gear, and air planes crossing different layers in air. Switching can be a disaster to a system since frequent switching between two asymptotically stable subsystems may result in unstable dynamics. On the contrary, switching can be a benefit to a system since controlled switching is sometimes imposed by the designers to achieve desired performance. This encourages the study of system dynamics and performance when undesired switching occurs or controlled switching is imposed. In this research, …

Light Touch Based Virtual Cane For Balance Assistance During Standing, Sindhu Reddy Alluri

Masters Theses

"Can additional information about one's body kinematics provided through hands improve human balance? Light-Touch (LT) through hands helps improve balance in a wide range of populations, both healthy and impaired. The force is too small to provide any meaningful mechanical assistance -- rather, it is suggested that the additional sensory information through hands helps the body improve balance.

To investigate the potential for improving human balance through biofeedback through hands, we developed a Virtual Cane (VC) for balance assistance during standing. The VC mimics the physical cane's function of providing information about one's body in space. Balance experiments on 10 …