We're really excited to announce at Caltech
this new initiative called the RoAM Initiative.
What RoAM stands for is
Robotic Assisted Mobility
The idea of the RoAM Initiative
is to take ideas from robotics,
from neural control, and put them together
to help people live better lives
to help restore mobility, especially 
in the context of bipedal locomotion
I'm Aaron Ames, I'm the Bren Professor of Mechanical and Civil Engineering and Control Dynamical Systems
here at Caltech, and
we're standing in the Amber Lab.
For a long time our central focus has been
realizing dynamic and efficient walking
on bipedal robots. That is: how do we
capture the efficient and elegant way
that humans walk dynamically
in a robotic context?
What's interesting is in this process of studying dynamic locomotion from a control theory perspective,
from a mathematical perspective,
is the application of this
to understanding how to make humans walk better.
That is, how do we take what we
know about robotic walking for bipedal
robots, and translate that to help people
walk again, walk better, walk more efficiently, 
and more importantly, restore locomotion for people?
Professor Joel Burdick in mechanical and civil
engineering, he's discovered with his collaborators
that if you stimulate the spinal cord, 
that they can actually get the legs to start to fire again.
They've gotten paraplegics to stand with their own legs
by stimulating their spinal cords.
The first time you see a patient stand up, you're hooked. 
You just don't go back.
I'm Joel Burdick, the Richard and Dorothy Hayman Prof. of Mechanical Engineering and Bioengineering.
More than 20 years ago I started working with Professor Richard Andersen here at Caltech
on brain-machine interfaces.
We've been developing both implantable
and now a non-implantable technology
to stimulate the spinal cord
That's a central piece of our approach - 
to sort of revive the damaged circuits
below the injury and to
kind of trick them into thinking that
they're talking to the brain.
So, part of RoAM now is to go even one step further,
to have the robots coordinate
with the spinal stimulation, not only to
improve spinal function but to allow
people to go out and actually use the
robots in their daily lives.
Really we seem to be at a cusp here.
We have all these algorithms for robots that had no human involved whatsoever,
So now we have to put a human in the loop
and think about how to take those
dynamic algorithms with the human playing a part.
What we hope to do is coordinate how the
stimulation changes in real-time
with how the exoskeleton is actually moving
So as you're moving through the gate cycle, 
when you lift your leg up
we'll probably want to adjust the
electrodes a little bit to give a little
more extra oomph to the leg that's still
standing, and also to encourage the leg
which is now in the swing phase to
more naturally go forward
And so by hitting them both with the robot side
- which is the mechanical part -
and the stimulator - the electrical part - 
we can then make sure
the circuits are learning the proper
coordination as well.
What we're trying to do is break boundaries.
When you start talking about putting a robot on a person, you have to change the paradigm
of what you think about what a robot is.
And with that comes new science at every
level of the robotic system, and the way
it works with the person 
to achieve the ultimate goal
We can actually make a positive effect on people's lives
in a day-to-day basis.
Their quality of life can improve 
if we can restore mobility for them.
I think this deserves, and in fact, requires, 
our intellectual effort to try to solve this problem.
