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In the upcoming years, there will be a significant increase in the world’s older adult population. This demographic shift, combined with rising cases of spinal cord injuries, stroke or cerebral palsy, will result in a greater number of individuals affected by walking-related conditions. Therefore, the development of assistive walking devices is essential to enhance the autonomy of people with reduced mobility. Generally, the design of customised devices for each pathology is complex and expensive. This means that the need to use tools that facilitate the selection of the number of actuators providing external assistance to reduce the manufacturing costs of these devices and simplifying their usability for patients are essential objectives. Under this premise, this doctoral thesis presents the framework to analyse and simulate gait using a cable-assisted exoskeleton (Exosuit) to support the gait of older adults. For customizing the device, a study of the main differences between the gait patterns of young adults and older adults is carried out. For the design of the exosuit, a study of the effect on the neuromuscular system is proposed through the simulation of cable-assisted gait. These simulations provide information on how muscle activations vary during assisted gait based on inverse dynamic analysis and dynamic optimization. The results obtained in this doctoral thesis have allowed for a preliminary design of a functional prototype of an exosuit for walking assistance within the context of the National and Regional Research Projects in which this thesis has been developed. The proposed methodologies have been used to design a wearable exoskeleton to assist in walking for the elderly., En los próximos años se producirá un aumento significativo de la población mundial de adultos mayores. Este cambio demográfico, combinado con el aumento de casos de lesiones medulares, derrames cerebrales o parálisis cerebral, se traducirá en un mayor número de personas afectadas por dolencias relacionadas con la marcha. Por tanto, el desarrollo de dispositivos de asistencia a la marcha es esencial para mejorar la autonomía de las personas con movilidad reducida. Por lo general, el diseño de dispositivos personalizados para cada patología es complejo y costoso. Por ello, la necesidad de utilizar herramientas que faciliten la selección del número de actuadores que proporcionan asistencia externa para reducir los costes de fabricación de estos dispositivos y simplificar su usabilidad para los pacientes son objetivos esenciales. Bajo esta premisa, esta tesis doctoral presenta el marco para analizar y simular la marcha utilizando un exoesqueleto asistido por cable (Exosuit) para dar soporte a la marcha de personas mayores. Para la personalización del dispositivo, se realiza un estudio de las principales diferencias entre los patrones de marcha de los adultos jóvenes y los adultos mayores. Para el diseño del exosuit, se propone un estudio del efecto sobre el sistema neuromuscular mediante la simulación de la marcha asistida por cable. Estas simulaciones proporcionan información sobre cómo varían las activaciones musculares durante la marcha asistida a partir del análisis dinámico inverso y la optimización dinámica. Los resultados obtenidos en esta tesis doctoral han permitido el diseño preliminar de un prototipo funcional de exosuit para la asistencia a la marcha en el contexto de los Proyectos de Investigación Nacional y Regional en los que se ha desarrollado esta tesis. Las metodologías propuestas se han utilizado para diseñar un exoesqueleto wearable de asistencia a la marcha para personas mayores.

In the last decade, research focused on rehabilitation robotics has progressed from proposing restricted or rigid solutions in a clinical setting to portable devices compliant with the user and also adapted to the their requirements, based on their disability and the rehabilitation training program. Novel techniques have inspired the evolution of rehabilitation devices from hard and bulky to soft, lightweight, and fully wearable. For example, biologically inspired actuators have relaxed the constraint of having to rely on rigid supports, as the skeletal system can be used to that end. Furthermore, the use of synergies havehas led to a reduction of in the number of actuators and improved their control. Moreover, the latest advances in modeling and simulation have allowed for assessing and compensating for fatigue, as well as simulating the use of assistive devices out of aclinical environment. All these research achievements have enabled anew generation of portable rehabilitation devices. In the present Frontiers Research Topic, novel techniques for the design, simulation, sensing, and control of rehabilitation devices are presented for rehabilitation devices such as powered exoskeletons, neuroprostheses, and equipment for moving the rehabilitation environment out of the clinical setting., Peer Reviewed, Objectius de Desenvolupament Sostenible::3 - Salut i Benestar, Postprint (published version)

[ES] En el presente trabajo se diseña un sistema pasivo de instalaciones, basado en iluminación natural, en las edificaciones de una planta industrial, dedicada a la fabricación de estibas y carpintería. Contiene la justificación de la propuesta técnica así como el estudio, análisis y determinación de sus limitaciones en la eficiencia energética de la planta. Incluirá la simulación de los sistemas de iluminación natural en los diferentes locales del sector productivo, así como la estimación, mediante software específico, de los niveles de iluminación en los planos de trabajo, coeficientes de uniformidad e índices de eficiencia energética de los diferentes locales., [EN] In the present work a passive system of facilities is designed, based on natural lighting, in the buildings of an industrial plant, dedicated to the manufacture of pallets and carpentry. It contains the justification for the technical proposal as well as the study, analysis and determination of its limitations in the energy efficiency of the plant. It will include the simulation of natural lighting systems in the different areas of the productive sector, as well as the estimation, through specific software, of the levels of illumination in the work planes, uniformity coefficients and energy efficiency indices of the different premises.

[ES] En el presente trabajo se diseña un sistema pasivo de instalaciones, basado en iluminación natural, en las edificaciones de una planta industrial, dedicada a la fabricación de estibas y carpintería. Contiene la justificación de la propuesta técnica así como el estudio, análisis y determinación de sus limitaciones en la eficiencia energética de la planta. Incluirá la simulación de los sistemas de iluminación natural en los diferentes locales del sector productivo, así como la estimación, mediante software específico, de los niveles de iluminación en los planos de trabajo, coeficientes de uniformidad e índices de eficiencia energética de los diferentes locales., [EN] In the present work a passive system of facilities is designed, based on natural lighting, in the buildings of an industrial plant, dedicated to the manufacture of pallets and carpentry. It contains the justification for the technical proposal as well as the study, analysis and determination of its limitations in the energy efficiency of the plant. It will include the simulation of natural lighting systems in the different areas of the productive sector, as well as the estimation, through specific software, of the levels of illumination in the work planes, uniformity coefficients and energy efficiency indices of the different premises.

[ES] En el presente trabajo se diseña un sistema pasivo de instalaciones, basado en iluminación natural, en las edificaciones de una planta industrial, dedicada a la fabricación de estibas y carpintería. Contiene la justificación de la propuesta técnica así como el estudio, análisis y determinación de sus limitaciones en la eficiencia energética de la planta. Incluirá la simulación de los sistemas de iluminación natural en los diferentes locales del sector productivo, así como la estimación, mediante software específico, de los niveles de iluminación en los planos de trabajo, coeficientes de uniformidad e índices de eficiencia energética de los diferentes locales., [EN] In the present work a passive system of facilities is designed, based on natural lighting, in the buildings of an industrial plant, dedicated to the manufacture of pallets and carpentry. It contains the justification for the technical proposal as well as the study, analysis and determination of its limitations in the energy efficiency of the plant. It will include the simulation of natural lighting systems in the different areas of the productive sector, as well as the estimation, through specific software, of the levels of illumination in the work planes, uniformity coefficients and energy efficiency indices of the different premises.

Postprint (published version)

The estimation of muscular forces is useful in several areas such as biomedical or rehabilitation engineering. As muscular forces cannot be measured in vivo non-invasively they must be estimated by using indirect measurements such as surface electromyography (sEMG) signals or by means of inverse dynamic (ID) analyses. This paper proposes an approach to estimate muscular forces based on both of them. The main idea is to tune a gain matrix so as to compute muscular forces from sEMG signals. To do so, a curve fitting process based on least-squares is carried out. The input is the sEMG signal filtered using singular spectrum analysis technique. The output corresponds to the muscular force estimated by the ID analysis of the recorded task, a dumbbell weightlifting. Once the model parameters are tuned, it is possible to obtain an estimation of muscular forces based on sEMG signal. This procedure might be used to predict muscular forces in vivo outside the space limitations of the gait analysis laboratory., Postprint (published version)

Robotic gait training after spinal cord injury is of high priority to maximize independence and improve the living conditions of the patients. Current rehabilitation robots are expensive and heavy, and are generally found only in the clinical environment. To overcome these issues, we present the design of a low-cost, low-weight and personalized robotic orthosis for incomplete spinal cord injured subjects. The paper also presents a preliminary experimental evaluation of the assistive device on one subject with spinal cord injury that can control hip flexion to a certain extent, but lacks control of knee and ankle muscles. Results show that gait velocity, stride length and cadence of walking increased (24,11%, 7,41% and 15,56%, respectively) when wearing active orthoses compared to the case when the subject used the usual passive orthoses., Postprint (published version)

The surface electromyography (sEMG) signal is a low amplitude signal that emanates from contracting muscles. It can be used directly to measure muscle activity (once noise has been removed) or it can be smoothed for some other application, e.g., orthoses or prostheses control. Here, an automatic heuristic procedure is presented which applies singular spectrum analysis (SSA) and cluster analysis to de-noise andsmoothsEMG signals. SSAis anon-parametric technique thatdecomposes the originaltime series into a set of additive time series in which the noise present in the acquired signal can be easily identified. The proposed approach constitutes an alternative to the traditional smoothing procedures, such as moving average (MOVAG), root mean square (RMS), or low-pass Butterworth filtering that are used to extract the trend of the signal. To assess the quality of the method, the results of its application to a non-stationary sEMG signal are compared with those of other step-wise filtering and smoothing techniques.

The surface electromyography (sEMG) signal is a low amplitude signal that emanates from contracting muscles. It can be used directly to measure muscle activity (once noise has been removed) or it can be smoothed for some other application, e.g., orthoses or prostheses control. Here, an automatic heuristic procedure is presented which applies singular spectrum analysis (SSA) and cluster analysis to de-noise andsmoothsEMG signals. SSAis anon-parametric technique thatdecomposes the originaltime series into a set of additive time series in which the noise present in the acquired signal can be easily identified. The proposed approach constitutes an alternative to the traditional smoothing procedures, such as moving average (MOVAG), root mean square (RMS), or low-pass Butterworth filtering that are used to extract the trend of the signal. To assess the quality of the method, the results of its application to a non-stationary sEMG signal are compared with those of other step-wise filtering and smoothing techniques.

The surface electromyography (sEMG) signal is a low amplitude signal that emanates from contracting muscles. It can be used directly to measure muscle activity (once noise has been removed) or it can be smoothed for some other application, e.g., orthoses or prostheses control. Here, an automatic heuristic procedure is presented which applies singular spectrum analysis (SSA) and cluster analysis to de-noise andsmoothsEMG signals. SSAis anon-parametric technique thatdecomposes the originaltime series into a set of additive time series in which the noise present in the acquired signal can be easily identified. The proposed approach constitutes an alternative to the traditional smoothing procedures, such as moving average (MOVAG), root mean square (RMS), or low-pass Butterworth filtering that are used to extract the trend of the signal. To assess the quality of the method, the results of its application to a non-stationary sEMG signal are compared with those of other step-wise filtering and smoothing techniques.

Postprint (published version)

Simulation of walking in individuals with incomplete spinal cord injuries (SCI) wearing an active orthosis is a challenging problem from both the analytical and the computational points of view, due to the redundant nature of the simultaneous actuation of the two systems. The objective of this work is to quantify the contributions of muscles and active orthosis to the net joint torques, so as to assist the design of active orthoses for SCI. The functional innervated muscles of SCI patients were modeled as Hill-type actuators, while the idle muscles were represented by elastic and dissipative elements. The orthosis was included as a set of external torques added to the ankles, knees, and hips to obtain net joint torque patterns similar to those of normal unassisted walking. The muscle-orthosis redundant actuator problem was solved through a physiological static optimization approach, for which several cost functions and various sets of innervated muscles were compared., Postprint (published version)

https://patrimoniodigital.ucm.es/r/thumbnail/741745, https://patrimoniodigital.ucm.es/r/item/5325117608

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