Personalizing exoskeleton assistance while walking in the real world.

ABSTRACT: Personalized exoskeleton assistance provides users with the largest improvements in walking speed¹ and energy economy^2-4 but requires lengthy tests under unnatural laboratory conditions. Here we show that exoskeleton optimization can be performed rapidly and under real-world conditions. We designed a portable ankle exoskeleton based on insights from tests with a versatile laboratory testbed. We developed a data-driven method for optimizing exoskeleton assistance outdoors using wearable sensors and found that it was equally effective as laboratory methods, but identified optimal parameters four times faster. We performed real-world optimization using data collected during many short bouts of walking at varying speeds. Assistance optimized during one hour of naturalisti

SUBMITTER: Slade P 

PROVIDER: S-EPMC9556303 | biostudies-literature | 2022 Oct

REPOSITORIES: biostudies-literature