Journal
IEEE TRANSACTIONS ON NEURAL SYSTEMS AND REHABILITATION ENGINEERING
Volume 25, Issue 2, Pages 119-130Publisher
IEEE-INST ELECTRICAL ELECTRONICS ENGINEERS INC
DOI: 10.1109/TNSRE.2016.2523250
Keywords
Assistive robotics; biomechanics; human-robot interaction; soft exosuits
Categories
Funding
- Defense Advanced Research Projects Agency (DARPA), Warrior Web Program [W911QX-12-C-0084]
- Wyss Institute for Biologically Inspired Engineering
- John A. Paulson School of Engineering and Applied Sciences at Harvard University
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To understand the effects of soft exosuits on human loaded walking, we developed a reconfigurable multi-joint actuation platform that can provide synchronized forces to the ankle and hip joints. Two different assistive strategies were evaluated on eight subjects walking on a treadmill at a speed of 1.25 m/s with a 23.8 kg backpack: 1) hip extension assistance and 2) multi-joint assistance (hip extension, ankle plantarflexion and hip flexion). Results show that the exosuit introduces minimum changes to kinematics and reduces biological joint moments. A reduction trend in muscular activity was observed for both conditions. On average, the exosuit reduced the metabolic cost of walking by 0.21 +/- 0.04 and 0.67 +/- 0.09 W/kg for hip extension assistance and multi-joint assistance respectively, which is equivalent to an average metabolic reduction of 4.6% and 14.6%, demonstrating that soft exosuits can effectively improve human walking efficiency during load carriage without affecting natural walking gait. Moreover, it indicates that actuating multiple joints with soft exosuits provides a significant benefit to muscular activity and metabolic cost compared to actuating single joint.
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