Portfolio

Dr. Kota Takahashi, Associate Professor in the Department of Health and Kinesiology at the University of Utah and director of the Sayu Lab for Biomechanics & Locomotion, leads research focused on understanding and improving human movement through interdisciplinary biomechanics. His work integrates engineering, physiology, and clinical insight to address fundamental questions in prosthetic and wearable robotics design.

In collaboration with Humotech, Dr. Takahashi’s lab has leveraged the Caplex® platform—specifically the PRO-004 Pylon Emulator—to investigate how programmable axial stiffness and shock absorption influence gait mechanics, energetics, and user experience in prosthetic foot research.

Dr. Philippe Malcolm and his team at the University of Nebraska at Omaha are pioneering research into gait energetics using waist-tethered systems. This innovative setup allows researchers to investigate how external support affects the metabolic costs of walking and running. By tethering subjects at the waist, Dr. Malcolm’s studies provide insights into the biomechanics and energy demands of gait, paving the way for advances in assistive device design and wearable robotics.

A broad interdisciplinary team of engineers and clinicians at the University of Dayton are leveraging an 8 degree-of-freedom Caplex system configured with bilateral ankle and hip exoskeletons to accelerate research into how aging affects biomechanics. In addition, the team is trailblazing with novel approaches to incorporating the programmable wearable robotic system into both undergraduate and graduate coursework, increasing opportunities for hands-on learning and familiarizing students with these essential tools to set them up for success in their careers.

The race is on to realize practical, comfortable, and effective exoskeleton designs that significantly reduce the effort required to walk, run, and more. Grounded in first principles, and combining emulation-based methods with human-in-the-loop optimization, the Stanford Biomechatronics Lab is leading the charge, having realized massive 50% reductions in some conditions. Stay tuned to this page as Steve Collins and his team continue to raise the bar on what is possible, including translating these methods into real-world portable systems by leveraging the massive data set they’ve built via emulation experiments.

Before there was Caplex, developers of prosthetic foot technologies had no choice but to build prototype after prototype in the pursuit of perfection. In 2010, Josh Caputo, Steve Collins, and Peter Adamczyk came together and began to build an emulation paradigm that today is enabling researchers, developers, and clinician scientists around the world to iterate on prosthetic foot design parameters more quickly, efficiently, and effectively.

The importance of biarticular actuation is one of the many biomechanical mysteries of human locomotion. This is of paramount importance to individuals with trans-tibial amputation who lose the function of the gastrocnemius, which actuates the ankle and knee joint simultaneously. Karl Zelik and his team at Vanderbilt University are leveraging emulation to systematically explore these relationships, expanding our knowledge of this essential physiology and informing the design of future wearable systems that could utilize biarticular actuation to deliver greater energetic and other benefits to individuals.