FULL DAY WORKSHOP: Monday, May 19, 2025

Emerging robotic exoskeletons have the potential to enhance performance of non-disabled users, restore normative leg biomechanics to impaired users, or rehabilitate limb function after neurological disorders. However, these devices have not been widely adopted due to their rigidity, bulkiness, acoustic noise, cost, battery life, and/or non-intuitive control. While parallel industries are providing powerful, lightweight, and inexpensive motors with long-lasting batteries, the exoskeleton research community is now largely focused on mechanical design, interface, and control challenges. 

One body of work has shown that human walking effort can be reduced by customizing the assistance torque pattern to the user for a given activity through human-in-the-loop optimization. While some results have extended outside the lab, it is unclear how to quickly generalize these methods across many users and activities. Another body of work has shown that task-agnostic control methods can handle a continuous range of activities without user-specific calibration, for example, predicting human joint torques across activities to reduce muscle effort or metabolic cost. However, it is unclear how these versatile control methods can be personalized for optimal assistance, especially for clinical patients. This workshop will explore specificity vs. generalizability across users and activities with the goal of finding benefits from both perspectives. This theme will be discussed as it relates to both control and device hardware optimization.

INSTRUCTIONS FOR CONTRIBUTED POSTERS AND DEMOS

Exoskeleton researchers are encouraged to submit contributed posters and/or demos for presentation at the workshop. Please use this form to submit a contribution by March 31. You will be asked to provide the list of authors, poster title (if applicable), demo title (if applicable), and one paragraph abstract. You may submit either a poster, demo, or both through the same form. For authors that submit both a poster and demo, these will be co-located at the workshop. Authors will be notified of acceptance of their submissions by April 7.

INVITED SPEAKERS

TENTATIVE WORKSHOP PROGRAM 

INVITED TALKS

• Enhancing Mobility with Task-Agnostic, Backdrivable Exoskeletons for the Hip, Knee, and Ankle, Robert Gregg, University of Michigan, USA

• From Lab to Clinic and Beyond: Designing, Controlling, and Testing Powered Exoskeletons for Enhanced Mobility, Tommaso Lenzi, University of Utah, USA

• AI based on Internal Human State Simultaneously Enables Task Generalizable & User Personalized Control for Wearable Robots, Aaron Young, Georgia Institute of Technology, USA

• Performing human-in-the-loop optimization beyond the laboratory, Patrick Slade, Harvard University, USA

• Context-Aware Control: Enhancing Human Performance with Soft Wearable Robotics, Machine Learning, and Vision Algorithms, Lorenzo Masia, Technische Universität München (TUM), Germany

• Uncertainty-Aware Control of an Ankle Exoskeleton, Max Shepherd, Northeastern University, USA

• The Wearable Robot Standard Platform, Kyoungchul Kong, Angel Robotics, South Korea

• Adaptive and Intermittent Control Strategies for Stable Walking Mechanics and Muscle Conditioning, Victor Duenas, Syracuse University, USA

• Improving Mediolateral Gait Balance via Proactive Step Width Modulation by Hip Exoskeletons, He (Helen) Huang, North Carolina State University, USA

• Self-balancing lower-limb exoskeleton locomotion for motor complete paraplegia, Maegan Tucker, Georgia Institute of Technology, USA

• Leveraging Human Learning to Advance Lower Limb Exoskeletons, Meghan Huber, University of Massachusetts Amherst, USA

• From Task-Invariant Control to Task-Invariant Customization for Lower-Limb Exoskeletons: Current Progress and Ongoing Work, Ge Lv, Clemson University, USA

• Doing a lot, with a little: Using exoskeletons to subtly influence walking, Rai MacLean, University of Twente, The Netherlands

DEMONSTRATIONS

• M-BLUE Hip, Knee, and Ankle Exoskeletons, Robert Gregg, University of Michigan, USA

• The Utah powered hip, knee, and ankle exoskeletons, Tommaso Lenzi, University of Utah, USA

• End-to-end control of the HIKE (hip-knee exoskeleton) wearable pants integrated exoskeleton system, Aaron Young, Georgia Institute of Technology, USA

• A Lower limb Exosuit for Wellness, Lorenzo Masia, Technische Universität München (TUM), Germany

• Uncertainty-Aware Control of an Ankle Exoskeleton, Max Shepherd, Northeastern University, USA

• Demo of Angel SUIT H10, Kyoungchul Kong, Angel Robotics, South Korea

• Assistive and Perturbation Controllers Targeting the Hip Joint and Soleus Muscle Activity, Victor Duenas, Syracuse University, USA

• Hip Exoskeleton for Step Width Modulation, He (Helen) Huang, North Carolina State University, USA

• Atalante exoskeleton, Maegan Tucker, Georgia Institute of Technology, USA

• Portable robotic hip exoskeleton for walking and running, Meghan Huber, University of Massachusetts Amherst, USA

• Adjustable compliance footwear technology to investigate gait adaptation, Meghan Huber, University of Massachusetts Amherst, USA

• A portable hip exoskeleton system for assisting agile human locomotion, Ge Lv, Clemson University, USA

• Portable ankle exoskeleton with non-traditional assistance, Rai MacLean, University of Twente, The Netherlands

• Reinforcement Learning-Based Step Width Control in Hip Exoskeleton-Assisted Walking and Its Impact on Gait Balance, Soe Lin Paing, Abbas Alili, Varun Nalam and He (Helen) Huang, North Carolina State University, USA

• User adaptive design for a hip exoskeleton, Varun Nalam, Soe Lin Paing, Helen Huang, North Carolina State University, USA

• Personalized, data-driven exoskeleton control for post-stroke gait economy using Bayesian optimization, Daniel Rodriguez-Jorge; Yash Mhaskar; Gregory Sawicki; Aaron Young, Georgia Institute of Technology, USA

POSTER PRESENTATIONS

• Center of Mass Feedback for Exoskeletons: A Versatile Control Approach for Balance Augmentation, Kristen Jakubowski, Greg Sawicki, Lena Ting

• EEG-Driven Reinforcement Learning Control of Cable-Driven Lower-Limb Exoskeletons, Soroush Zare and Ye Sun

• Data Driven Estimation of Internal Physiological States Enables Task-Agnostic Exoskeleton Control, Ethan B. Schonhaut, Matthew T. Lerner, Aaron J. Young

• Real-Time Uncertainty Detection for Safe, Adaptive Exoskeleton Control, Fatima Tourk, Bishoy Galoaa, Sanat Shajan, Michael Everett, Max Shepherd

• A Computer Vision-based Control Framework for Multi-Environment Adaptation in Lower Limb Exosuits, Enrica Tricomi, Lorenzo Masia

• Advancing Exoskeleton Control: A Dataset for Understanding Human Locomotion on Compliant Terrain, Charikleia Angelidou, Panagiotis Artemiadis

• LSTM-Based Neuroadaptive Control for Enhancing Lower Limb Exoskeleton Responsiveness and Adaptability, Erkan Kaplanoglu, Gazi Akgun

• Effects of Hip Adduction-Abduction Exoskeleton-Controlled Step Width on Mediolateral Gait Balance during Walking, Soe Lin Paing, Abbas Alili, Varun Nalam and He (Helen) Huang

• Investigating a Simplified Generalized Control Strategy Using Passive Elastic Forces During a Motor Learning Squat Task, Eugenio Frias-Miranda, Hong-Anh A. Nguyen, Mackenzie R. Misterka, Mackenzie M. Matthews, Deva D. Chan, and Laura H. Blumenschein 

• A Standardized Framework for Soft Exosuit Actuator Design via Dimensional Analysis, Odysseas Simatos, Panagiotis Polygerinos

• Rapid Online Learning of Hip Exoskeleton Assistance Preferences, Giulia Ramella, Auke Ijspeert, Mohamed Bouri

• Actuator Selection for a High-Dynamic Exoskeleton in Gait Assistance, Carlos Relaño, Iván Torres, Jordi Marsà, Añaterve Oval-Trujillo, Daniel Sanz-Merodio and Miguel López

• Link: A Modular Exoskeleton System Designed for Dynamic Manual Tasks, Sean Bridges, Nikki Esposito, Reese Peterson, Stefan Fasano, Garrett Lundegard, Alexis Maslyczyk, Kain Miller, Bridget Longo, Chinmay Shah, Nicole Stafford, Greg Sawicki, Jared Li

• A Nonlinear Closed-Loop Control Strategy for Hip Exoskeletons Providing Frontal-Plane Balance Assistance, Miguel Manchola, Steven Evangelos, Victor H. Duenas

• Co-Designing a Hip Exoskeleton: Towards Enhancing Physical Therapy Adoption Through Continuous User Feedback, Varun Nalam, Soe Lin Paing, Ming Liu, Helen Huang

• Dynamics of Fast and Slow Gait Adaptation to Hip vs. Ankle Exoskeletons, Hansol X. Ryu, Dongho Park, Kennedy G. Kerr, Amro Alshareef, Hangyeol Song, Aaron J. Young, Gregory S. Sawicki

• Personalizing Human Gait Entrainment: A Reinforcement Learning Approach to Optimizing Magnitude of Periodic Mechanical Perturbations, Omik Save, Junmin Zhong, Suhrud Joglekar, Jennie Si, Hyunglae Lee

• Estimating gait orbital stability with soft wearable sensors: a validation study against motion capture, Jeongin Moon, Holly Yanco, Richard Nuckols

• Personalized, data-driven exoskeleton control for post-stroke gait economy using Bayesian optimization, Daniel Rodriguez-Jorge; Yash Mhaskar; Gregory Sawicki; Aaron Young