Human-exoskeleton interaction portrait.

Human-robot physical interaction contains crucial information for optimizing user experience, enhancing robot performance, and objectively assessing user adaptation. This study introduces a new method to evaluate human-robot interaction and co-adaptation in lower limb exoskeletons by analyzing muscle activity and interaction torque as a two-dimensional random variable. We introduce the interaction portrait (IP), which visualizes this variable's distribution in polar coordinates. We applied IP to compare a recently developed hybrid torque controller (HTC) based on kinematic state feedback and a novel adaptive model-based torque controller (AMTC) with online learning, proposed herein, against a time-based controller (TBC) during treadmill walking at varying speeds. Compared to TBC, both HTC and AMTC significantly lower users' normalized oxygen uptake, suggesting enhanced user-exoskeleton coordination. IP analysis reveals that this improvement stems from two distinct co-adaptation strategies, unidentifiable by traditional muscle activity or interaction torque analyses alone. HTC encourages users to yield control to the exoskeleton, decreasing overall muscular effort but increasing interaction torque, as the exoskeleton compensates for user dynamics. Conversely, AMTC promotes user engagement through increased muscular effort and reduces interaction torques, aligning it more closely with rehabilitation and gait training applications. IP phase evolution provides insight into each user's interaction strategy formation, showcasing IP analysis's potential in comparing and designing novel controllers to optimize human-robot interaction in wearable robots.

How do the cultural contexts of waste practices affect health and well-being?

Managing the increasing amount and complexity of municipal solid waste poses a growing challenge to the entire WHO European Region, with serious implications for human health and well-being. Addressing this requires moving beyond technical innovations to better understand and integrate a wide range of factors, including cultural contexts. By examining evidence from a broad array of disciplines in peer-reviewed and grey literature, as well as case studies from the Region, this report opens up a systematic engagement with the role of culture in waste management practices and how this fosters or undermines conditions for health and well-being. While highlighting various tensions between cultural forces at multiple scales, the evidence suggests that culturally grounded approaches to waste management can yield higher rates of public participation and cross-sectoral collaboration, be more sustainable in the long term, and lead to better health and well-being for the wider public, particularly for groups with heavier health burdens associated with waste. The evidence provides a sound basis for strengthening existing policy frameworks and identifying areas in which culture can be a driver for improved policies that are supported by all stakeholders.