[AI Seminar Series] Seminar by Prof. Jonathan Realmuto, Friday April 17th, 12-1pm, MRB Seminar Room

[Vassilis Tsotras]

The next AI Seminar will be on Friday April 17th, 12-1pm, in the MRB
Seminar Room (1st floor).

*** Pizza and refreshments will be provided ****

To keep track of the number of attendees, please *register* at:
https://www.eventbrite.com/e/ai-seminar-series-tickets-1987246915018

The talk will be given by *Prof*. *Jonathan Realmuto,* Department of
Mechanical Engineering, UCR

TITLE: Closing the loop: learning-based wearable robots for
neurorehabilitation

ABSTRACT:
This talk presents two recent efforts where machine learning addresses
fundamental challenges in wearable robot modeling and control. The first
contribution addresses the robot side: a hybrid Neural ODE framework for
modeling artificial muscle dynamics that embeds physical structure into a
learned model, enabling reliable stiffness control over a 126–176 N/mm
range. The second addresses the human side: a transformer-based neural
decoder that estimates joint impedance directly from EMG, learning
time-varying stiffness and equilibrium position under a least-action prior
— the assumption that voluntary movement is energetically efficient. These
two contributions reflect a common principle: that both sides of the
human-robot interface — the robot's dynamics and the user's intent — must
be learned rather than prescribed. The talk closes with an emerging
direction: Hebbian self-organization of spinal-like reflex networks, which
may ultimately replace both learned models with a single continuously
adapting system, removing the need for supervised training altogether.


Bio:
Jonathan Realmuto is an assistant professor in the department of Mechanical
Engineering at the University of California, Riverside and a visiting
scientist at Children's Hospital Orange County. Together with his research
group, the Bionic Systems Laboratory, he designs, builds, and
experimentally tests wearable robots and collaborative robots.

------------------------------------
Sponsored by the RAISE at UCR Institute, the AI Seminar Series presents
speakers working on cutting edge Foundational AI or applying AI in their
research. The goal of these seminars is to inform the UCR community about
current trends in AI research and promote collaborations between faculty in
this emerging field. These seminars are open to interested faculty and
graduate/undergraduate students. Please forward this email to other
colleagues or students in your lab that may be interested. After the seminar a
discussion will follow for questions, open problems, ideas for possible
collaborations etc.

Sincerely,
Vassilis Tsotras
Professor, CSE Department
co-Director, RAISE at UCR Institute

Amit Roy-Chowdhury
Professor, ECE Department
co-Director, RAISE at UCR Institute
-------------- next part --------------
An HTML attachment was scrubbed...
URL: <https://lists.ucr.edu/pipermail/raise-seminar/attachments/20260411/e80fadba/attachment.htm>