Walking with Robots

[] Join the IEEE Toronto Instrumentation & Measurement – Robotics & Automation Joint Chapter for a talk on the Walking with Robots, presented by Dr. Amy R. Wu from Queen’s University. Wednesday, July 31, 2024 @ 5:00 – 6:00 PM Abstract: A world embedded with robots seems inevitable. One challenge, however, is designing robots to work with us, not against us. It is unclear how assistive robots, such as robot companions, would affect activities of human daily living, such as walking. To inform the design of controllers that enable seamless human-robot interaction during walking tasks, we first sought to determine whether legged robots could affect human walking behavior. Robots have the potential to greatly improve human lives, but we should ensure they are designed to interact well with us to minimize mechanical and possibly energetically related consequences from human-robot interaction. In this talk, Dr. Amy R. Wu will discuss two studies they conducted with human participants and quadrupedal robots walking side-by-side. They compared human behavior with and without the robot and found that legged robots can affect human gait even without physical interactions, which has implications for the design of robot companions or monitoring robots. Speaker(s): Amy R. Wu, PhD, P.L.Eng Virtual: https://events.vtools.ieee.org/m/425309