Autonomous soft exosuit for human augmentation

For centuries, engineers have proposed different devices to augment basic human locomotion, such as walking and running. However, as humans are highly optimized to move efficiently, it is known to be hard further improving one’s energy economy with external assistance. Our group is developing next-generation soft wearable devices (“soft exosuits”) that augment locomotion of healthy individuals, using innovative textile structures to interface to the body. Specific research topics include:

• Functional apparel that comfortably anchors to the body and applies assistance in parallel with the underlying muscles
• Actuation/transmission systems that are lightweight and efficient to minimally constrain the wearer but still generate high augmentation power
• Wearable sensors that are capable of identifying the wearer’s motion/intention as well as the external environment/context
• Bioinspired controls that are adaptive to the wearer’s natural pattern of locomotion as well as the environmental changes
• Experimental biomechanics to evaluate human performance and provides insights on better augmentation strategies.

We think these devices can be potentially used to help load carriers and long-distance walkers, e.g. soldiers, first responders, explorers, and recreational hikers.