Salamander-like quadruped robots are designed inspired by the skeletal structure of their biological counterparts. However, existing controllers cannot fully exploit these morphological features and largely rely on predefined gait patterns or joint trajectories, which prevents the generation of diverse and flexible locomotion and limits their applicability in real-world scenarios. In this paper, we propose a learning framework that enables the robot to acquire a diverse repertoire of omnidirectional gaits without reference motions. Each body part is controlled by a phase variable capable of forward and backward evolution, with a phase coverage reward to promote the exploration of the leg phase space. Additionally, morphological symmetry of the robot is incorporated via data augmentation, improving sample efficiency and enforcing both motion-level and task-level symmetry in learned behaviors. Extensive experiments show that the robot successfully acquires 22 omnidirectional gaits exhibiting both dynamic and symmetric movements, demonstrating the effectiveness of the proposed learning framework.

In this paper, an approach for gait assistance with a lower body exoskeleton is described. Two concepts, transparency and motion assistance, are combined. The transparent mode, where the system is following the user's free motion with a minimum of perceived interaction forces, is realized by exploiting the gear backlash of the actuation units. During walking a superimposed assistance mode applies an additional torque guiding the legs to their estimated future position. The concept of adaptive oscillators is utilized to learn the quasi-periodic signals typical for locomotion. First experiments showed promising results.

Abstract--Running offers substantial health benefits, but improper gait patterns can lead to injuries, particularly without expert feedback. While prior gait analysis systems based on cameras, insoles, or body-mounted sensors have demonstrated effectiveness, they are often bulky and limited to offline, post-run analysis. Wrist-worn wearables offer a more practical and non-intrusive alternative, yet enabling real-time gait recognition on such devices remains challenging due to noisy Inertial Measurement Unit (IMU) signals, limited computing resources, and dependence on cloud connectivity. This paper introduces StrikeW atch, a compact wrist-worn system that performs entirely on-device, real-time gait recognition using IMU signals. As a case study, we target the detection of heel versus forefoot strikes to enable runners to self-correct harmful gait patterns through visual and auditory feedback during running. We propose four compact DL architectures (1D-CNN, 1D-SepCNN, LSTM, and Transformer) and optimize them for energy-efficient inference on two representative embedded Field-Programmable Gate Arrays (FPGAs): the AMD Spartan-7 XC7S15 and the Lattice iCE40UP5K. Using our custom-built hardware prototype, we collect a labeled dataset from outdoor running sessions and evaluate all models via a fully automated deployment pipeline. Our results reveal clear trade-offs between model complexity and hardware efficiency. Evaluated across 12 participants, 6-bit quantized 1D-SepCNN achieves the highest average F1 score of 0.847 while consuming just 0.350 µJ per inference with a latency of 0.140 ms on the iCE40UP5K running at 20 MHz. This configuration supports up to 13.6 days of continuous inference on a 320 mAh battery. Running is one of the most widely practiced sports worldwide, offering significant physical and mental benefits [1].

Advances in wearable robotics challenge the traditional definition of human motor systems, as wearable robots redefine body structure, movement capability, and perception of their own bodies. While these devices can empower the wearer's motor performance, there is limited understanding of how wearer s update their perception of body images, especially images in dynamic movements, while learning to use these modern devices. This study aimed to fill the gap by examining the changes of body image as individuals learned to walk with a robotic prosthetic l eg over multi - day training. We measured gait performance and perceived body images via Selected Coefficient of Perceived Motion (SCoMo) after each training session. Based on human motor learning theory extended to wearer - robot systems, w e hypothesized that learning the perceived body image when walking with a robotic leg co - evolves with the actual gait improvement and becomes more certain and more accurate to the actual motion. Our result confirmed that motor learning improved both physical and perceived ga it pattern towards normal, indicating that via practice the wearers incorporated the robotic leg into their sensorimotor systems to enable wearer - robot movement coordination. However, a persistent discrepancy between perceived and actual motion remained, l ikely due to the absence of direct sensation and control of the prosthesis from wearers. Additionally, the perceptual overestimation at the later training sessions might limit further motor improvement. These findings suggest that enhancing the human sense of wearable robots and frequent calibrating perception of body image are essential for effective training with lower limb wearable robots and for developing more embodied assistive technologies.

Prosthetic legs play a pivotal role in clinical rehabilitation, allowing individuals with lower-limb amputations the ability to regain mobility and improve their quality of life. Gait analysis is fundamental for optimizing prosthesis design and alignment, directly impacting the mobility and life quality of individuals with lower-limb amputations. Vision-based machine learning (ML) methods offer a scalable and non-invasive solution to gait analysis, but face challenges in correctly detecting and analyzing prosthesis, due to their unique appearances and new movement patterns. In this paper, we aim to bridge this gap by introducing a multi-purpose dataset, namely ProGait, to support multiple vision tasks including Video Object Segmentation, 2D Human Pose Estimation, and Gait Analysis (GA). ProGait provides 412 video clips from four above-knee amputees when testing multiple newly-fitted prosthetic legs through walking trials, and depicts the presence, contours, poses, and gait patterns of human subjects with transfemoral prosthetic legs. Alongside the dataset itself, we also present benchmark tasks and fine-tuned baseline models to illustrate the practical application and performance of the ProGait dataset. W e compared our baseline models against pre-trained vision models, demonstrating improved generalizability when applying the ProGait dataset for prosthesis-specific tasks. Our code is available at https://github.com/pittisl/ProGait

Current exoskeleton control methods often face challenges in delivering personalized treatment. Standardized walking gaits can lead to patient discomfort or even injury. Therefore, personalized gait is essential for the effectiveness of exoskeleton robots, as it directly impacts their adaptability, comfort, and rehabilitation outcomes for individual users. To enable personalized treatment in exoskeleton-assisted therapy and related applications, accurate recognition of personal gait is crucial for implementing tailored gait control. The key challenge in gait recognition lies in effectively capturing individual differences in subtle gait features caused by joint synergy, such as step frequency and step length. To tackle this issue, we propose a novel approach, which uses Multi-Scale Global Dense Graph Convolutional Networks (GCN) in the spatial domain to identify latent joint synergy patterns. Moreover, we propose a Gait Non-linear Periodic Dynamics Learning module to effectively capture the periodic characteristics of gait in the temporal domain. To support our individual gait recognition task, we have constructed a comprehensive gait dataset that ensures both completeness and reliability. Our experimental results demonstrate that our method achieves an impressive accuracy of 94.34% on this dataset, surpassing the current state-of-the-art (SOTA) by 3.77%. This advancement underscores the potential of our approach to enhance personalized gait control in exoskeleton-assisted therapy.

Gait recognition, known for its ability to identify individuals from a distance, has gained significant attention in recent times due to its non-intrusive verification. While video-based gait identification systems perform well on large public datasets, their performance drops when applied to real-world, unconstrained gait data due to various factors. Among these, uncontrolled outdoor environments, non-overlapping camera views, varying illumination, and computational efficiency are core challenges in gait-based authentication. Currently, no dataset addresses all these challenges simultaneously. In this paper, we propose an OptiGait-LGBM model capable of recognizing person re-identification under these constraints using a skeletal model approach, which helps mitigate inconsistencies in a person's appearance. The model constructs a dataset from landmark positions, minimizing memory usage by using non-sequential data. A benchmark dataset, RUET-GAIT, is introduced to represent uncontrolled gait sequences in complex outdoor environments. The process involves extracting skeletal joint landmarks, generating numerical datasets, and developing an OptiGait-LGBM gait classification model. Our aim is to address the aforementioned challenges with minimal computational cost compared to existing methods. A comparative analysis with ensemble techniques such as Random Forest and CatBoost demonstrates that the proposed approach outperforms them in terms of accuracy, memory usage, and training time. This method provides a novel, low-cost, and memory-efficient video-based gait recognition solution for real-world scenarios.

Gait refers to the patterns of limb movement generated during walking, which are unique to each individual due to both physical and behavioural traits. Walking patterns have been widely studied in biometrics, biomechanics, sports, and rehabilitation. While traditional methods rely on video and motion capture, advances in underfoot pressure sensing technology now offer deeper insights into gait. However, underfoot pressures during walking remain underexplored due to the lack of large, publicly accessible datasets. To address this, the UNB StepUP database was created, featuring gait pressure data collected with high-resolution pressure sensing tiles (4 sensors/cm$^2$, 1.2m by 3.6m). Its first release, UNB StepUP-P150, includes over 200,000 footsteps from 150 individuals across various walking speeds (preferred, slow-to-stop, fast, and slow) and footwear types (barefoot, standard shoes, and two personal shoes). As the largest and most comprehensive dataset of its kind, it supports biometric gait recognition while presenting new research opportunities in biomechanics and deep learning. The UNB StepUP-P150 dataset sets a new benchmark for pressure-based gait analysis and recognition. Please note that the hypertext links to the dataset on FigShare remain dormant while the document is under review.

Gait recognition is a significant biometric technique for person identification, particularly in scenarios where other physiological biometrics are impractical or ineffective. In this paper, we address the challenges associated with gait recognition and present a novel approach to improve its accuracy and reliability. The proposed method leverages advanced techniques, including sequential gait landmarks obtained through the Mediapipe pose estimation model, Procrustes analysis for alignment, and a Siamese biGRU-dualStack Neural Network architecture for capturing temporal dependencies. Extensive experiments were conducted on large-scale cross-view datasets to demonstrate the effectiveness of the approach, achieving high recognition accuracy compared to other models. The model demonstrated accuracies of 95.7%, 94.44%, 87.71%, and 86.6% on CASIA-B, SZU RGB-D, OU-MVLP, and Gait3D datasets respectively. The results highlight the potential applications of the proposed method in various practical domains, indicating its significant contribution to the field of gait recognition.

Accurate lower-limb joint kinematic estimation is critical for applications such as patient monitoring, rehabilitation, and exoskeleton control. While previous studies have employed wearable sensor-based deep learning (DL) models for estimating joint kinematics, these methods often require extensive new datasets to adapt to unseen gait patterns. Meanwhile, researchers in computer vision have advanced human pose estimation models, which are easy to deploy and capable of real-time inference. However, such models are infeasible in scenarios where cameras cannot be used. To address these limitations, we propose a computer vision-based DL adaptation framework for real-time joint kinematic estimation. This framework requires only a small dataset (i.e., 1-2 gait cycles) and does not depend on professional motion capture setups. Using transfer learning, we adapted our temporal convolutional network (TCN) to stiff knee gait data, allowing the model to further reduce root mean square error by 9.7% and 19.9% compared to a TCN trained on only able-bodied and stiff knee datasets, respectively. Our framework demonstrates a potential for smartphone camera-trained DL models to estimate real-time joint kinematics across novel users in clinical populations with applications in wearable robots.