ExoLaN: Physics-Consistent Context-Aware Dynamics Learning for Exoskeletons

arXiv:2609.31434v1 Announce Type: new Abstract: Task-agnostic assistive exoskeleton control based on human intention offers greater flexibility than conventional approaches that rely on predefined tasks or motion patterns. Human joint torque estimation enables task-agnostic assistance by characterizing user actions. Physics-consistent methods such as Deep Lagrangian Networks (DeLaN) have been applied to estimate the human torques in multi-user settings, but existing approaches cannot adapt to a specific user without retraining, and do not account for intermittent contacts during locomotion. We propose ExoLaN, a Context-Aware DeLaN for human-exoskeleton interaction that learns the full coupled system dynamics while adapting to changes in interaction context. ExoLaN combines temporal context with partial contact-force measurements from force-sensitive insoles to infer latent dynamics embeddings and estimate generalized contact torques. On seven unseen users performing 21 unseen tasks, ExoLaN reduces torque estimation MSE by 7% compared to a black-box baseline. Beyond inverse dynamics, ExoLaN serves as a unified model that also enables accurate forward prediction: training with a multi-step prediction loss reduces acceleration MSE by 59% and long-horizon position and velocity errors by 60% and 93%, respectively, compared with a single-step loss. Moreover, the learned latent context captures task information without explicit task labels, making it a promising signal for task-aware assistive control.

Abstract:Task-agnostic assistive exoskeleton control based on human intention offers greater flexibility than conventional approaches that rely on predefined tasks or motion patterns. Human joint torque estimation enables task-agnostic assistance by characterizing user actions. Physics-consistent methods such as Deep Lagrangian Networks (DeLaN) have been applied to estimate the human torques in multi-user settings, but existing approaches cannot adapt to a specific user without retraining, and do not account for intermittent contacts during locomotion. We propose ExoLaN, a Context-Aware DeLaN for human-exoskeleton interaction that learns the full coupled system dynamics while adapting to changes in interaction context. ExoLaN combines temporal context with partial contact-force measurements from force-sensitive insoles to infer latent dynamics embeddings and estimate generalized contact torques. On seven unseen users performing 21 unseen tasks, ExoLaN reduces torque estimation MSE by 7% compared to a black-box baseline. Beyond inverse dynamics, ExoLaN serves as a unified model that also enables accurate forward prediction: training with a multi-step prediction loss reduces acceleration MSE by 59% and long-horizon position and velocity errors by 60% and 93%, respectively, compared with a single-step loss. Moreover, the learned latent context captures task information without explicit task labels, making it a promising signal for task-aware assistive control.

Robotics (cs.RO); Systems and Control (eess.SY)

arXiv:2609.31434 [cs.RO]

(or arXiv:2609.31434v1 [cs.RO] for this version)

https://doi.org/10.48550/arXiv.2609.31434 Focus to learn more arXiv-issued DOI via DataCite (pending registration)

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ExoLaN: Physics-Consistent Context-Aware Dynamics Learning for Exoskeletons

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