Since the uprising of new biomedical orthotic devices, exoskeletons have been put in the spotlight for their possible use in rehabilitation. Even if these products might share some commonalities among them in terms of overall structure, degrees of freedom and possible actions, they quite often differ in their approach on how to generate a feasible, stable and comfortable gait trajectory pattern. This paper introduces three proposed trajectories that were generated by using a basis function interpolation method and by working closely with two major rehabilitation centers in Italy. The whole procedure has been focused on the concepts of a configurable walk for patients that suffer from spinal cord injuries. We tested the solutions on a group of healthy volunteers and on a spinal-cord injury patient with the use of the new TWIN exoskeleton developed at the Rehab Technologies Lab at the Italian Institute of Technology.

This paper presents a geometric approach to the problem of designing visual feedback control laws to steer a nonholonomic vehicle, equipped with a fixed monocular camera, through a gate. The originality of our approach is to introduce and exploit the natural geometry induced by the presence of a gate in the environment, e.g. bundle of hyperbolae, ellipses and circles, providing stabilizing feedback control laws that steer the vehicle through the middle of the gate. Moreover, using visual servoing we prove that this geometry can be measured directly in the camera image plane. As a consequence, we provide an image-based control scheme, avoiding the use of a state observer. Simulations in a realistic scenario and experiments are provided to show the effectiveness of our feedback control laws.

This paper presents a geometric approach to the problem of steering a robot subject to nonholonomic constraints through a door by using only visual measurements coming from a single fixed on-board monocular camera. The door is represented by two landmarks located on its vertical supports. After exploring the geometric structure that naturally emerges from the problem statement, e.g., bundle of hyperbolae, ellipses, and circles, we exploit this planar geometry to provide stabilizing feedback control laws to drive the vehicle through the middle of the door. Using visual servoing, we prove that this geometry can be directly measured in the camera image plane. Hence, we provide an image-based control scheme, avoiding the use of a state observer. Simulations in a realistic scenario and experiments are provided to show the effectiveness of the feedback control laws.