The idea for this thesis emerged from my senior design capstone project, A Wearable Threat Awareness System. A TFmini-S LiDAR sensor is used as one component of this system; the functionality of and signal processing behind this type of sensor are elucidated in this document. Conceptual implementations of the optical and digital stages of the signal processing is described in some detail. Following an introduction in which some general background knowledge about LiDAR is set forth, the body of the thesis is organized into two main sections. The first section focuses on optical processing to demodulate the received signal backscattered from the target object. This section describes the key steps in demodulation and illustrates them with computer simulation. A series of graphs capture the mathematical form of the signal as it progresses through the optical processing stages, ultimately yielding the baseband envelope which is converted to digital form for estimation of the leading edge of the pulse waveform using a digital algorithm. The next section is on range estimation. It describes the digital algorithm designed to estimate the arrival time of the leading edge of the optical pulse signal. This enables the pulse’s time of flight to be estimated, thus determining the distance between the LiDAR and the target. Performance of this algorithm is assessed with four different levels of noise. A calculation of the error in the leading-edge detection in terms of distance is also included to provide more insight into the algorithm’s accuracy.

The concept of entrainment broadly applies the locking of phases between 2 independent systems [17]. This physical phenomenon can be applied to modify neuromuscular movement in humans during bipedal locomotion. Gait entrainment to robotic devices have shown great success as alternatives to labor intensive methods of rehabilitation. By applying additional torque at the ankle joint, previous studies have exhibited consistent gait entrainment to both rigid and soft robotic devices. This entrainment is characterized by consistent phase locking of plantarflexion perturbations to the ‘push off’ event within the gait cycle. However, it is unclear whether such phase locking can be attributed to the plantarflexion assistance from the device or the sensory stimulus of movement at the ankle. To clarify the mechanism of entrainment, an experiment was designed to expose the user to a multitude of varying torques applied at the ankle to assist with plantar flexion. In this experiment, no significant difference in success of subject entrainment occurred when additional torque applied was greater than a detectable level. Force applied at the ankle varied from ~60N to ~130N. This resulted in successful entrainment ~88\% of the time at 98 N, with little to no increase in success as force increased thereafter. Alternatively, success of trials decreased significantly as force was reduced below this level, causing the perturbations to become undetectable by participants. Ultimately this suggests that higher levels of actuator pressure, and thus greater levels of torque applied to the foot, do not increase the likelihood of entrainment during walking. Rather, the results of this study suggest that proper detectable sensory stimulus is the true mechanism for entrainment.