Assistive Devices

A device is the assistive hardware that composes with a human MSK model to form an environment. A device can be an exoskeleton, a powered or passive prosthetic leg, or any other assistive device. Devices come from assist_sim. You select one with the device field of the environment spec.

Lower-limb assistive devices composed on the model

See Device Catalog for every currently available device.

Where devices fit

Four packages work together to build a simulation:

  • myo_sim provides the human MSK models and their meshes.
  • assist_sim holds the device configurations and the combination pipeline. It composes one MSK and one device into a single runnable model.
  • myoassist.terrains provides the scene (ground and heightfields). The assist_sim output is model-only, with no ground.
  • myoassist consumes the composed model for Controller Optimization and Reinforcement Learning.

assist_sim composes the model. It does not provide MSK models, terrain, or a training loop.

Device keys

Each device key comes from a config file, models/<DeviceDir>/<variant>config.yaml. For example, models/DephyExoBoot/L1config.yaml gives the key DephyExoBoot_L1, and models/OpenSourceLeg/A_L1config.yaml gives OpenSourceLeg_A_L1. The device’s device.name field is also registered as an alias.

When a device attaches to an MSK, its device.name becomes a prefix on every body, site, mesh, joint, actuator, and tendon that the device contributes (for example DephyExoBootL1_exo_1_r). The prefix prevents name collisions and marks the device’s parts in the composed model.

Per-MSK overrides

One device config can carry per-MSK variations. Sections such as attachments, tendon_modifications, keyframe_overrides, actuator_removals, tendon_removals, and mesh_replacements can hold a default entry plus per-MSK-key entries. The resolver picks the matching MSK key if it is present, otherwise it uses default. See Device Configuration for the sections and their fields.

In this section

Table of contents