J. Bae, et al., “
A soft exosuit for patients with stroke: Feasibility study with a mobile off-board actuation unit,” in
14th International Conference on Rehabilitation Robotics (ICORR), Singapore, 2015, pp. 131-138. [Runner up Best Paper Award].
Publisher's Version PDF B. Quinlivan, A. T. Asbeck, D. Wagner, T. Ranzani, S. Russo, and C. J. Walsh, “
Force Transfer Characterization of a Soft Exosuit for Gait Assistance,” in
ASME 2015 International Design Engineering Technical Conferences & Computers and Information in Engineering Conference (IDETC/CIE 2015), Boston, MA, USA, 2015.
Publisher's VersionAbstractRecently, there has been a growing interest in moving away from traditional rigid exoskeletons towards soft exosuits that can provide a variety of advantages including a reduction in both the weight carried by the wearer and the inertia experienced as the wearer flexes and extends their joints. These advantages are achieved by using structured functional textiles in combination with a flexible actuation scheme that enables assistive torques to be applied to the biological joints. Understanding the human-suit interface in these systems is important, as one of the key challenges with this approach is applying force to the human body in a manner that is safe, comfortable, and effective. This paper outlines a methodology for characterizing the structured functional textile of soft exosuits and then uses that methodology to evaluate several factors that lead to different suit-human series stiffnesses and pressure distributions over the body. These factors include the size of the force distribution area and the composition of the structured functional textile. Following the test results, design guidelines are suggested to maximize the safety, comfort, and efficiency of the exosuit.
PDF A. T. Asbeck, K. Schmidt, I. Galiana, D. Wagner, and C. J. Walsh, “
Multi-joint Soft Exosuit for Gait Assistance,” in
IEEE International Conference on Robotics and Automation (ICRA), Seattle, WA, 2015, pp. 6197-6204.
Publisher's VersionAbstractExosuits represent a new approach for applying assistive forces to an individual, using soft textiles to interface to the wearer and transmit forces through specified load paths. In this paper we present a body-worn, multi-joint soft exosuit that assists both ankle plantar flexion and hip flexion through a multiarticular load path, and hip extension through a separate load path, at walking speeds up to 1.79m/s (4.0mph). The exosuit applies forces of 300N in the multiarticular load path and 150N in hip extension, which correspond to torques of 21% and 19% of the nominal biological moments at the ankle and hip during unloaded walking. The multi-joint soft exosuit uses a new actuation approach that exploits joint synergies, with one motor actuating the multiarticular load paths on both legs and one motor actuating the hip extension load paths on both legs, in order to reduce the total system weight. Control is accomplished by an algorithm that uses only a gyroscope at the heel and a load cell monitoring the suit tension, and is shown to adapt within a single step to changes in cadence. Additionally, the control algorithm can create slack in the suit during non-level-ground walking motions such as stepping over obstacles so that the system can be transparent to the wearer when required. The resulting system consumes 137W, and has a mass of 6.5kg including batteries.
PDF A. T. Asbeck, K. Schmidt, and C. J. Walsh, “
Soft Exosuit for Hip Assistance,”
Robotics and Autonomous Systems (RAS) Special Issue on Wearable Robotics, vol. 73, pp. 102-110, 2015.
Publisher's VersionAbstractExoskeletons comprised of rigid load-bearing structures have been developed for many years, but a new paradigm is to create “exosuits” that apply tensile forces to the body using textiles and utilize the body’s skeletal structure to support compressive forces. Exosuits are intended to augment the musculature by providing small to moderate levels of assistance at appropriate times in the walking cycle. They have a number of substantial benefits: with their fabric construction, exosuits eliminate problems of needing to align a rigid frame precisely with the biological joints and their inertia can be extremely low. In this paper, we present a fully portable hip-assistance exosuit that uses a backpack frame to attach to the torso, onto which is mounted a spooled-webbing actuator that connects to the back of the users thigh. The actuators, powered by a geared brushless motor connected to a spool via a timing belt, wind up seat-belt webbing onto the spool so that a large travel is possible with a simple, compact mechanism. Designed to be worn over the clothing, the webbing creates a large moment arm around the hip that provides torques in the sagittal plane of up to 30% of the nominal biological torques for level-ground walking. Due to its soft design, the system does not restrict the motion of the hip in the ab- and adduction directions or rotation about the leg axis. Here we present the design of the system along with some initial measurements of the system in use during walking on level ground at 1.25 m/s, where it creates a force of up to 150 N on the thigh, equivalent to a torque of 20.5 Nm to assist hip extension.
PDF A. T. Asbeck, S. M. M. De Rossi, K. G. Holt, and C. J. Walsh, “
A Biologically Inspired Soft Exosuit for Walking Assistance,”
The International Journal of Robotics Research (IJRR), vol. 34, no. 6, pp. 744-762, 2015.
Publisher's VersionAbstractWe present the design and evaluation of a multi-articular soft exosuit that is portable, fully autonomous, and provides assistive torques to the wearer at the ankle and hip during walking. Traditional rigid exoskeletons can be challenging to perfectly align with a wearer’s biological joints and can have large inertias, which can lead to the wearer altering their natural motion patterns. Exosuits, in comparison, use textiles to create tensile forces over the body in parallel with the muscles, enabling them to be light and not restrict the wearer’s kinematics. We describe the biologically inspired design and function of our exosuit, including a simplified model of the suit’s architecture and its interaction with the body. A key feature of the exosuit is that it can generate forces passively due to the body’s motion, similar to the body’s ligaments and tendons. These passively generated forces can be supplemented by actively contracting Bowden cables using geared electric motors, to create peak forces in the suit of up to 200 N. We define the suit–human series stiffness as an important parameter in the design of the exosuit and measure it on several subjects, and we perform human subjects testing to determine the biomechanical and physiological effects of the suit. Results from a five-subject study showed a minimal effect on gait kinematics and an average best-case metabolic reduction of 6.4%, comparing suit worn unpowered versus powered, during loaded walking with 34.6 kg of carried mass including the exosuit and actuators (2.0 kg on both legs, 10.1 kg total).
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