title: Biomechanical and Physiological Evaluation of Multi-Joint Assistance With Soft Exosuits.
abstract: 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.
authors: Ye
authors: Y
authors: Ding
authors: Ignacio
authors: I
authors: Galiana
authors: Alan T
authors: AT
authors: Asbeck
authors: Stefano Marco Maria
authors: SM
authors: De Rossi
authors: Jaehyun
authors: J
authors: Bae
authors: Thiago Ribeiro Teles
authors: TR
authors: Santos
authors: Vanessa Lara
authors: VL
authors: de Araujo
authors: Sangjun
authors: S
authors: Lee
authors: Kenneth G
authors: KG
authors: Holt
authors: Conor
authors: C
authors: Walsh
mesh_terms: D000328:Adult; D001186:Artificial Limbs; D055119:Elastic Modulus; D004867:Equipment Design; D019544:Equipment Failure Analysis; D000067190:Exoskeleton Device; D005684:Gait / Q000502:physiology*; D006801:Humans; D007866:Leg / Q000502:physiology*; D000066530:Neurological Rehabilitation / Q000295:instrumentation*; D015203:Reproducibility of Results; D012371:Robotics / Q000295:instrumentation*; D012680:Sensitivity and Specificity; D016138:Walking / Q000502:physiology*