@article {697846,
	title = {Biomechanical and Physiological Evaluation of Multi-joint Assistance with Soft Exosuits},
	journal = {IEEE Transactions on Neural Systems and Rehabilitation Engineering},
	volume = {25},
	number = {2},
	year = {2017},
	month = {28 Jan 2016},
	pages = {119 - 130},
	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 {\textpm} 0.04 W/kg and 0.67 {\textpm} 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.

},
	url = {http://dx.doi.org/10.1109/TNSRE.2016.2523250},
	author = {Ye Ding and Ignacio Galiana and Alan T. Asbeck and De Rossi, Stefano M.M. and Jaehyun Bae and Teles Dos Santos, Thiago R. and De Araujo, Vanessa L. and Lee, Sangjun and Kenneth G. Holt and Conor J Walsh}
}
