Tesi etd-09222025-172640
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Tipo di tesi
Corso di Dottorato (D.M.226/2021)
Autore
KHALILIANMOTAMED BONAB, ALI
URN
etd-09222025-172640
Titolo
Hybrid Soft-Rigid Exosuit for Upper-Limb Assistance: Development, Evaluation, and Sensory Augmentation
Settore scientifico disciplinare
ING-IND/13
Corso di studi
Istituto di Tecnologie della Comunicazione, dell'Informazione e della Percezione - Ph.D. in Emerging Digital Technologies
Relatori
relatore Prof. FRISOLI, ANTONIO
tutor Dott. CHIARADIA, DOMENICO
tutor Dott. CHIARADIA, DOMENICO
Parole chiave
- Exosuit
- Human-robot interaction
- Sensory augmentation
- Wearable haptics
- Rehabilitation robotics
Data inizio appello
30/06/2026;
Disponibilità
parziale
Riassunto analitico
Soft exosuits offer important advantages over traditional rigid exoskeletons in terms of comfort, portability, and weight. By relying on compliant interfaces rather than rigid mechanical joints, they inherently resolve some of the challenges associated with rigid exoskeletons. However, this compliance also introduces important limitations, including reduced force-transmission fidelity, lower interaction bandwidth, limited kinesthetic guidance, comfort-related trade-offs, and high variability in human-robot interaction across users and tasks. This dissertation addresses these challenges through the development and evaluation of a hybrid soft-rigid elbow exosuit for upper-limb assistance, while extending its rehabilitative functionality beyond mechanical support through complementary sensory augmentation.
The dissertation first introduces a modeling, design, and geometrical optimization pipeline that combines analytical kinematic and dynamic modeling, anchor-point parameterization, and musculoskeletal simulation to identify design-relevant trends in force transmission and biomechanical interaction. This framework is then extended to analyze the internal dynamics of the exosuit and its interaction with the human limb through a lumped-parameter dynamic model of the coupled human-exosuit system. This model is used to examine compliance, bandwidth limitations, and resonance behavior, thereby establishing qualitative design guidelines and a theoretical basis for hybrid architectures.
Based on these foundations and established design guidelines, a hybrid soft-rigid elbow exosuit is developed that allocates stiffness along the force-transmission pathway while preserving compliant anatomical interfaces in order to improve exosuit performance and robustness while maintaining wearability and user comfort. The developed system is then extensively evaluated through human-subject experiments addressing biomechanical performance, interaction dynamics, and robustness under generic control settings without subject-specific tuning, including testing in functional tasks representative of realistic use conditions. Beyond conventional biomechanical metrics, the dissertation also investigates neuromuscular adaptation through muscle synergy analysis in a prolonged endurance task simulating a functional load-carrying activity, showing that exosuit assistance modulates coordination selectively without disrupting the overall modular organization of muscle coordination.
Through this dissertation, the translational readiness of the hybrid elbow exosuit has been evaluated through a clinician-centered study combined with a clinical feasibility assessment, enabling a more realistic evaluation of the device and providing insights from one of the main stakeholders involved in the use of the device in rehabilitation settings. This study highlights the importance of usability, workflow integration, and practical deployability alongside technical performance, as well as the importance of such clinician-based studies prior to more extensive testing of the device with patients.
Finally, the dissertation aims to extend the rehabilitative value of the exosuit beyond mechanical compensation by introducing wearable haptic guidance as a complementary sensory channel to provide additional training functionality. To this end, haptic guidance has been studied independently to establish the efficacy of such devices in providing precise training guidance, followed by the introduction of a unified framework integrating wearable vibrotactile armbands with the exosuit and investigating the efficacy and interaction of the integrated system in a multimodal experimental setup for trajectory-following training while providing active assistance through the exosuit.
This dissertation establishes an integrated study that starts from the modeling, optimization, and design of exosuits and progresses toward extensive experimental validation. It then establishes a more realistic evaluation of the device in relation to rehabilitation settings through a clinician-centered translational readiness study, and explores sensory augmentation as an additional dimension that could further increase the potential of exosuits. Consequently, this dissertation supports the potential of hybrid soft-rigid wearable robots for more robust, functionally meaningful, and clinically relevant upper-limb assistance.
The dissertation first introduces a modeling, design, and geometrical optimization pipeline that combines analytical kinematic and dynamic modeling, anchor-point parameterization, and musculoskeletal simulation to identify design-relevant trends in force transmission and biomechanical interaction. This framework is then extended to analyze the internal dynamics of the exosuit and its interaction with the human limb through a lumped-parameter dynamic model of the coupled human-exosuit system. This model is used to examine compliance, bandwidth limitations, and resonance behavior, thereby establishing qualitative design guidelines and a theoretical basis for hybrid architectures.
Based on these foundations and established design guidelines, a hybrid soft-rigid elbow exosuit is developed that allocates stiffness along the force-transmission pathway while preserving compliant anatomical interfaces in order to improve exosuit performance and robustness while maintaining wearability and user comfort. The developed system is then extensively evaluated through human-subject experiments addressing biomechanical performance, interaction dynamics, and robustness under generic control settings without subject-specific tuning, including testing in functional tasks representative of realistic use conditions. Beyond conventional biomechanical metrics, the dissertation also investigates neuromuscular adaptation through muscle synergy analysis in a prolonged endurance task simulating a functional load-carrying activity, showing that exosuit assistance modulates coordination selectively without disrupting the overall modular organization of muscle coordination.
Through this dissertation, the translational readiness of the hybrid elbow exosuit has been evaluated through a clinician-centered study combined with a clinical feasibility assessment, enabling a more realistic evaluation of the device and providing insights from one of the main stakeholders involved in the use of the device in rehabilitation settings. This study highlights the importance of usability, workflow integration, and practical deployability alongside technical performance, as well as the importance of such clinician-based studies prior to more extensive testing of the device with patients.
Finally, the dissertation aims to extend the rehabilitative value of the exosuit beyond mechanical compensation by introducing wearable haptic guidance as a complementary sensory channel to provide additional training functionality. To this end, haptic guidance has been studied independently to establish the efficacy of such devices in providing precise training guidance, followed by the introduction of a unified framework integrating wearable vibrotactile armbands with the exosuit and investigating the efficacy and interaction of the integrated system in a multimodal experimental setup for trajectory-following training while providing active assistance through the exosuit.
This dissertation establishes an integrated study that starts from the modeling, optimization, and design of exosuits and progresses toward extensive experimental validation. It then establishes a more realistic evaluation of the device in relation to rehabilitation settings through a clinician-centered translational readiness study, and explores sensory augmentation as an additional dimension that could further increase the potential of exosuits. Consequently, this dissertation supports the potential of hybrid soft-rigid wearable robots for more robust, functionally meaningful, and clinically relevant upper-limb assistance.
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