Sharif Digital Repository

Several diseases and injuries may cause disability in locomotion (especially walking). Spinal cord injuries, brain stroke and disease like Parkinson are the most major causes. In the past, some efforts has been made to reduce the effect of organ’s disabilities, but today, there is the chance of healing the spinal cord injury By using new (Schwann Cell) method. Due to long time stillness and severe muscles weakness; condensed physiotherapy exercise is essential to recover locomotion abilities, particularly in walking. In this way, if the practices matches with the normal walking (especially weight bearing); it has more physiological and psychological effect. In order to achieve this goal, a... 

Humanoid robots are robots that are similar in appearance and performance to humans. Designing and controlling a humanoid robot to perform such supposedly ordinary tasks as walking, running, writing, talking, driving, riding bikes, and the like is such a difficult task from the control point of view that it seems to be quite ambitious and inaccessible. In this thesis, the previous efforts of scientists and researchers are presented using different intelligent controllers. Additionally, the dynamic analysis of selective biped (seven-link biped robot) is illustrated. In this research, we present a method to control the walking of the biped robot while retaining stability. In this method the... 

Many human inventions are inspired by nature, such as fish swimming, bird/insect flight, etc. A basic consideration for the design of swimming machines is the design of propulsors. A creative design of propulsors can be inspired by fish locomotion. The term locomotion means that thrust is generated by undulation of fish body. Thus, there is no need to have an external propulsor. We need to understand how thrust is obtained by fish locomotion. In this study, sub-carangiform motion, which is a well known locomotion and which is practiced by most fish, is simulated numerically using Lattice Boltzmann method (LBM). To simulate the geometry of fishlike body, the profile of a flexible airfoil... 

Dynamic Object Manipulation (DOM) and Dynamic Biped Locomotion (DBL) are certainly two major categories in robotics, which attract much attention of scientists. Their (hybrid) nonlinear dynamics usually make them challenging subjects to deal with. Such systems are often used as benchmarks to test new nonlinear control approaches or stability analyses. However, there is not a unified approach to both systems. Although it seems that DOM and DBL systems are completely different at first view, we deeply believe that essential similarities exist between these two robotic fields. In this dissertation, we study the correlation of DOM and DBL while addressing passive, underactuated, and fully... 

Nowadays nearly 1% of the world population depends on wheelchairs for walking and movement. Due to harmful changes in human lifestyle, different diseases like stroke and problems in musculoskeletal system are increasing noticeably. Despite the fact that wheelchairs have recently been improved they have faced big problems like forcing people not to move and just sit for a long period of time. Wearable robots not only help these patients to rehabilitate their disabled organ and walk, but also have a significant mental effect on them.
The analysis of an exoskeletal orthosis designed for patients who have pain in one of their knees is presented. A mechanism for knee exoskeleton is analyzed... 

In this research a robotic fish was designed and fabricated. For this propose different types of manufactured robotic fish were investigated and this model was developed and made with a one-piece flexible tail with an actuator that creates lateral movement through cable strings attached to the tail. Proposed mechanism has a simple, low cost structure that facilitates the control of the robotic fish movement. To control this robotic fish, a four-channel radio controller with 40 kHz frequency, was used. Swimming mode of this robotic fish is categorized in Subcarangiform swimming mode which is faster and has better maneuverability compared to its counterparts. It should be noted that the... 

In this work inspiring from the nature a control method is proposed for a stable rhythmic walking in a seven-link underactuated biped robot. Stable walking is a very important issue in biped robots and proposing a dynamically stable pattern of motion with the capability of acceleration and learning is our main purpose. It is tried that the presented method make the robot have a human like motion. This method controls dynamically the hybrid model of robot’s movement and stabilizes it by converging the time-invariant constraints considered to make this movement. Moreover, in addition to providing a suitable gait for the bipod robot, a robust control method is designed to improve the ability of... 

Spinal cord injury (SCI) is one of the most important causes of disability in the youth and costs enormous expenses for the government. Most SCI subjects use wheelchair as their main way of locomotion while standing and walking can benefit them in various aspects. The role of lower extremity muscles has been investigated in paraplegic gait with active orthoses or in partial weight support condition. However, due to the large expenses of active orthoses, their application have been limited to clinical trials and yet most SCI individuals use traditional AFO and KAFO for walking. The role and significance of trunk and upper extremity muscles (TUEM) has been investigated only in balance...