# Elliott J. Rouse

Elliott J Rouse is an American mechanical engineer, roboticist, and academic. He is an associate professor in the Departments of Robotics and Mechanical Engineering and Director of the Neurobionics Lab at the University of Michigan.
Rouse's research interests encompass precision machine design, exoskeletons/robotic prostheses development, brushless motors, human locomotion dynamics, perception, psychophysics, neural control of movement, biomechanics, and human performance augmentation. His work has been featured on TED, The Discovery Channel, CNN, National Public Radio, Wired Magazine UK, and Business Insider. His research has been published in academic journals, including Science Robotics, Nature Biomedical Engineering, IEEE Transactions on Mechatronics, and Nature. With the addition of several patents for wearable robotic system design and control, he is the recipient of awards including the NSF CAREER Award, Departmental Faculty Award, and the Henry Russel Award at University of Michigan.

## Education

Rouse completed his undergraduate education at Ohio State University, earning a Bachelor of Science in Mechanical Engineering in 2007. Following his undergraduate studies, he then pursued graduate studies at Northwestern University, obtaining a Master of Science in Biomedical Engineering in 2009, followed by a Ph.D. in Biomedical Engineering from 2009 to 2012. After obtaining his doctorate, he pursued a Postdoctoral Fellowship at the Massachusetts Institute of Technology from 2012 to 2014 at the MIT Media Lab working with Hugh Herr.

## Career

Following his postdoctoral fellowship, Rouse served as an assistant professor at Northwestern University Feinberg School of Medicine and Shirley Ryan AbilityLab from 2014 to 2017. Beginning in 2017, he transitioned to an assistant professor at the University of Michigan in the Department of Mechanical engineering. In 2022, he was promoted to associate professor in the Departments of Robotics and Mechanical Engineering. In 2021, he went on temporary leave from the University of Michigan while he co-founded the exoskeleton team at X, the moonshot factory, and served as a visiting faculty member in the Rapid Evaluation team. His research group, the Neurobionics Lab, studies how and why people should use wearable robotic systems, and designs wearable technologies.

## Research

Rouse and his research laboratory at the University of Michigan Neurobionics Laboratory have studied how and why people use exoskeletons and robotic prostheses and they leverage that information to develop hardware designs. A common thread within his research program is the topic of system dynamics, coupled with an emphasis on meaningful impact and 'hands-on' engineering. His group conducts scientific studies on human biomechanics and gait, while translating these insights to the development of robotic hardware, including exoskeletons and prostheses.
Rouse has showcased how the idea about leg joint stiffness is varied alongside the pose of the body during gait. He and his group have studied user-preferred settings of exoskeletons and prostheses, and investigated how these preferences vary between users and clinicians. He developed variable-stiffness prostheses and orthoses that can change their stiffness between steps, in addition to contributions in compliant mechanisms. His group also developed a new type of rotational (torsion) spring, which the most energy dense and compact design found in the robotics literature. He investigated exoskeleton control and users' ability to perceive changes in their own metabolic rate. He has developed approaches to understanding the effectiveness of lower-limb exoskeletons and their assistance using concepts from behavioral economics, which was awarded the 2023 Editor's Choice Award by Communications Engineering.
Rouse also founded and leads the Open-Source Leg project, an open-access hardware and software platform to foster lower-limb prosthetics research. The Open-Source Leg (OSL) is a modular, knee-ankle robotic leg that can be used together or separately. The project provides open-access plans and software files to build a high-performance robotic leg, which are then used to study the challenges in the control of these technologies. The design of the first-generation Open-Source Leg was published in an open-access academic journal. The project was awarded 'Most Innovative' by Fast Company in 2020 and has been featured in media publications.

## Awards and honors

* 2019 – CAREER Award, National Science Foundation
* 2023 – Departmental Faculty Award, University of Michigan
* 2024 – Henry Russel Award, University of Michigan

## Selected articles

* Rouse, E. J., Hargrove, L. J., Perreault, E. J., & Kuiken, T. A. (2014). Estimation of human ankle impedance during the stance phase of walking. IEEE Transactions on Neural Systems and Rehabilitation Engineering, 22(4), 870–878.
* Mooney, L. M., Rouse, E. J., & Herr, H. M. (2014). Autonomous exoskeleton reduces metabolic cost of human walking during load carriage. Journal of neuroengineering and rehabilitation, 11, 1–11.
* Shepherd, M. K., & Rouse, E. J. (2017). The VSPA foot: A quasi-passive ankle-foot prosthesis with continuously variable stiffness. IEEE Transactions on Neural Systems and Rehabilitation Engineering, 25(12), 2375–2386.
* Azocar, A. F., Mooney, L. M., Duval, J. F., Simon, A. M., Hargrove, L. J., & Rouse, E. J. (2020). Design and clinical implementation of an open-source bionic leg. Nature biomedical engineering, 4(10), 941–953.
* Clites, T. R., Shepherd, M. K., Ingraham, K. A., Wontorcik, L., & Rouse, E. J. (2021). Understanding patient preference in prosthetic ankle stiffness. Journal of neuroengineering and rehabilitation, 18, 1–16.
* Shorter, A. L., Richardson, J. K., Finucane, S. B., Joshi, V., Gordon, K., & Rouse, E. J. (2021). Characterization and clinical implications of ankle impedance during walking in chronic stroke. Scientific reports, 11(1), 16726.
* Medrano, R. L., Thomas, G. C., & Rouse, E. J. (2022). Can humans perceive the metabolic benefit provided by augmentative exoskeletons?. Journal of neuroengineering and rehabilitation, 19(1), 26.
* Ingraham, K. A., Remy, C. D., & Rouse, E. J. (2022). The role of user preference in the customized control of robotic exoskeletons. Science robotics, 7(64), eabj3487.
* Medrano, R. L., Thomas, G. C., Margolin, D., & Rouse, E. J. (2023). The economic value of augmentative exoskeletons and their assistance. Communications Engineering, 2(1), 43.
* Bons, Z., Thomas, G. C., Mooney, L., & Rouse, E. J. (2023). An energy-dense two-part torsion spring architecture and design tool. IEEE/ASME Transactions on Mechatronics, 29(3), 2373–2384.