Shock absorbers allow the damping of suspension vibrations, by dissipating kinetic energy. This energy theoretically can be harvested; however, practical solutions are not easily obtainable. This paper is dedicated to analyzing and evaluating the vibration energy in a vehicle’s suspension that is generated by road excitations. Also, it estimates the possible amount of harvested energy required to diminish accelerations of the vehicle body, the driver, or the passenger center of mass. The control of damper is realized by optimizing the best damping coefficient for different road roughness. Analytical results, obtained from the proposed dynamic model of the car, were compared with experimental data, showing a good coherence between them. These results allow us to evaluate the amount of energy circulating within shock absorbers and give information about the amount of the possible harvested energy. There is a very good relationship between energy needed for control and gained energy.

Editorial: Emerging technologies for assistive robotics: current challenges and perspectives

This paper focuses on finger force magnitude analysis during stiffness discrimination task. In the frame of theirStudy and research workMS students from the Université Grenoble Alpes specially designed an experimental bench allowing to simulate a pseudo-haptic spring. Then, a series of stiffness discrimination tests between reals springs and a pseudo-haptic spring were performed. Finger pressing forces and students’ (subjects’) perception of spring stiffness were recorded and analyzed. The analysis ofpsychometric curvesindicates that subjects underestimate the simulated stiffness of the pseudo-haptic spring. The results also indicate that the peak of finger force applied on pseudo-haptic spring increases as the simulated stiffness increases. Moreover, it was found that the relationships between the logarithm of stiffness and the finger force were linear for the real springs and the pseudo-haptic spring. Pseudo-haptics effect being provided by specially designed isometric force feedback device, the results of this study may be useful for computer-based rehabilitation tasks designed for motor disorder patients with muscle deficiency associated with limited joint movement range or for injured athletes in the process of rehabilitation.