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Rishiraj Bose has successfully defended his Ph.D. in Mechanical Engineering at the University of Massachusetts Amherst under the direction of Professor Frank Sup. His dissertation, A Robotic System to Exploit the Dynamics of an Unconstrained Fluid for Gait Intervention, introduces a new approach to underwater rehabilitation robotics that leverages fluid forces directly to influence human movement.
Hydrotherapy is widely used for gait training because buoyancy reduces joint loading while fluid drag provides resistance. However, conventional underwater treadmills offer limited control over how forces are applied to the body. Bose’s work addresses this limitation by developing a wearable hydrofoil device that attaches to the lower leg and actively adjusts its angle relative to water flow to generate targeted lift and drag forces during walking.
The project combined mechanical design, modeling, and control to create a compliant, energy-efficient assistive system capable of adapting to individual gait-training needs. A control framework that integrates adaptive model predictive control with data-driven methods enabled reliable regulation of hydrodynamic forces in use. Experiments with human subjects demonstrated that the system can measurably influence underwater gait and that its effects can be tuned through simple parameter adjustments.
This work establishes a foundation for fluid-mediated wearable robotics and opens new directions for rehabilitation technologies operating in unstructured environments, such as water. It also highlights the potential of hydrofoil-based actuation as an alternative to traditional rigid robotic assistance for gait intervention.
