A Task-Agnostic Control Strategy for Dynamic Assistance with Pneumatically Actuated Soft Exosuits
arXiv:2608.18364v1 Announce Type: new Abstract: Pneumatic artificial muscles have provided new opportunities to develop upper-extremity soft exosuits for reha- bilitation, augmentation, and assisted daily living. However, the complex dynamics and limited bandwidth of these actuators has made providing responsive assistance based on user intention a longstanding challenge. In this work, we present an inverse-plant control strategy for pneumatically actuated soft exosuits that only relies on kinematic sensing for task-agnostic and dynamic assistance during daily living. We model the human-robot system using a Hammerstein dynamic model, consisting of a Preisach hysteresis model and a linear time-invariant filter, to capture the static and dynamic behavior of the system. We personalize our model to each user using 140 s of data and approximate an inverse to integrate into our control loop. When evaluated on a test rig that emulated a soft assistive exosuit for the wrist, our controller reduced the interaction torque by up to 73% and the activation of key flexor and extensor muscles by up to 47% relative to the condition with no assistance for speeds ranging from 8{\deg}/s to 120{\deg}/s. Overall, this work presents a control strategy that can provide task-agnostic, dynamic assistance with pneumatically actuated soft exosuits without the need for physiological or force sensors to interpret user intention.
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[Submitted on 18 Aug 2026]
Title:A Task-Agnostic Control Strategy for Dynamic Assistance with Pneumatically Actuated Soft Exosuits
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Abstract:Pneumatic artificial muscles have provided new opportunities to develop upper-extremity soft exosuits for reha- bilitation, augmentation, and assisted daily living. However, the complex dynamics and limited bandwidth of these actuators has made providing responsive assistance based on user intention a longstanding challenge. In this work, we present an inverse-plant control strategy for pneumatically actuated soft exosuits that only relies on kinematic sensing for task-agnostic and dynamic assistance during daily living. We model the human-robot system using a Hammerstein dynamic model, consisting of a Preisach hysteresis model and a linear time-invariant filter, to capture the static and dynamic behavior of the system. We personalize our model to each user using 140 s of data and approximate an inverse to integrate into our control loop. When evaluated on a test rig that emulated a soft assistive exosuit for the wrist, our controller reduced the interaction torque by up to 73% and the activation of key flexor and extensor muscles by up to 47% relative to the condition with no assistance for speeds ranging from 8°/s to 120°/s. Overall, this work presents a control strategy that can provide task-agnostic, dynamic assistance with pneumatically actuated soft exosuits without the need for physiological or force sensors to interpret user intention.
Subjects:
Robotics (cs.RO); Human-Computer Interaction (cs.HC)
Cite as: arXiv:2608.18364 [cs.RO]
(or arXiv:2608.18364v1 [cs.RO] for this version)
https://doi.org/10.48550/arXiv.2608.18364
arXiv-issued DOI via DataCite (pending registration)
Submission history
From: Anoush Sepehri [view email] [v1] Tue, 18 Aug 2026 22:30:55 UTC (4,993 KB)
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