Passive ankle foot orthoses (AFOs) are often prescribed for children with cerebral palsy (CP) to assist locomotion, but predicting how specific device designs will impact energetic demand during gait remains challenging. Powered AFOs have been shown to reduce energy costs of walking in unimpaired adults more than passive AFOs, but have not been tested in children with CP. The goal of this study...

Maintaining consistency is a difficult challenge in crowd-powered systems in which constituent crowd workers may change over time. We discuss an initial outline for Chorus:Mnemonic, a system that augments the crowd’s collective memory of a conversation by automatically recovering past knowledge based on topic, allowing the system to support consistent multi-session interactions. We present the ...

In sustainable wireless sensor networks powered by ambient energy harvesting, node operation highly depends on the energy availability and harvesting rate. For them to support existing wireless sensor network applications, duty-cycling schemes need to adapt the nodes’ sleep-wake schedules according to energy harvesting and consumption rates. In this paper, we propose a harvesting-aware duty-cyc...

BACKGROUND Traditionally, the anatomical knee joint is locked in extension when walking with a conventional knee-ankle-foot orthosis. A powered knee-ankle-foot orthosis was developed to provide restriction of knee flexion during stance phase and active flexion and extension of the knee during swing phase of gait. OBJECTIVE The purpose of this study was to determine differences of the powered ...

Directed Technologies, Inc. has completed three analysis projects for the hydrogen program office during the past year: a detailed mass production cost estimate for stationary proton exchange membrane (PEM) fuel cell systems, an assessment of the costs of producing electricity from stationary fuel cells for buildings with hydrogen and heat cogeneration, and a preliminary assessment of the use o...

Automated terrain classification for electric powered wheelchairs (EPWs) has two primary motivations. First, certain terrains (e.g., sand and gravel) make wheelchair mobility more difficult. To alleviate this problem the wheelchair control system can be manually tuned for maximum speeds and/or accelerations to help adapt to various terrains. Terrain classification can then be used to automate t...

A quasi-passive leg exoskeleton is presented for load-carrying augmentation during walking. The exoskeleton has no actuators, only ankle and hip springs and a knee variabledamper. Without a payload, the exoskeleton weighs 11.7 kg and requires only 2 Watts of electrical power during loaded walking. For a 36 kg payload, we demonstrate that the quasi-passive exoskeleton transfers on average 80% of...

The criticality of sustainable development to control the unprecedented consequences climate change is clear. A vital element in launching sustainability projects financing, especially for by small and medium enterprises. first crucial step offering financing services identify evaluate promising projects. current practice accomplish this heavily depends on subject-matter expertise professional ...