Below are the current pilot projects that are currently being conducted during Phase III of the COBRE grant.
Dr. Ahad Behboodi
Title: GaiTron: a Humanoid Gait Simulator for Biomechanical Evaluation
Summary:
Human gait is highly variable, and that variability is often amplified in neurodiverse children and those with cerebral palsy, leading to instability, fatigue, and loss of independence. Today’s orthoses, prostheses, and exoskeletons are typically refined through many rounds of expensive, time‑consuming human-subject testing, which can add years and hundreds of thousands of dollars to each design iteration.
This pilot project will create Gaitron, a musculoskeletal humanoid robot engineered specifically to replicate typical and pathological walking patterns with high biomechanical fidelity. Using advanced reinforcement learning and novel stacked dielectric elastomer “artificial muscles,” the team will first teach an existing robot (Roboman) to reproduce pediatric ankle motion and then prototype a fully biomimetic 3D ankle module. Gaitron will provide a safe, reproducible, and untethered testbed for early evaluation of orthoses, prostheses, and exoskeletons, while also enabling new discovery science in gait variability and serving as a hands-on training platform for students in biomechanics and rehabilitation engineering.