Y. Ding, et al., “
Effect of timing of hip extension assistance during loaded walking with a soft exosuit,”
Journal of NeuroEngineering and Rehabilitation, vol. 2016, no. 13, pp. 87, 2016.
Publisher's VersionAbstract
Background
Recent advances in wearable robotic devices have demonstrated the ability to reduce the metabolic cost of walking by assisting the ankle joint. To achieve greater gains in the future it will be important to determine optimal actuation parameters and explore the effect of assisting other joints. The aim of the present work is to investigate how the timing of hip extension assistance affects the positive mechanical power delivered by an exosuit and its effect on biological joint power and metabolic cost during loaded walking. In this study, we evaluated 4 different hip assistive profiles with different actuation timings: early-start-early-peak (ESEP), early-start-late-peak (ESLP), late-start-early-peak (LSEP), late-start-late-peak (LSLP).
Methods
Eight healthy participants walked on a treadmill at a constant speed of 1.5 m · s-1 while carrying a 23 kg backpack load. We tested five different conditions: four with the assistive profiles described above and one unpowered condition where no assistance was provided. We evaluated participants’ lower limb kinetics, kinematics, metabolic cost and muscle activation.
Results
The variation of timing in the hip extension assistance resulted in a different amount of mechanical power delivered to the wearer across conditions; with the ESLP condition providing a significantly higher amount of positive mechanical power (0.219 ± 0.006 W · kg-1) with respect to the other powered conditions. Biological joint power was significantly reduced at the hip (ESEP and ESLP) and at the knee (ESEP, ESLP and LSEP) with respect to the unpowered condition. Further, all assistive profiles significantly reduced the metabolic cost of walking compared to the unpowered condition by 5.7 ± 1.5 %, 8.5 ± 0.9 %, 6.3 ± 1.4 % and 7.1 ± 1.9 % (mean ± SE for ESEP, ESLP, LSEP, LSLP, respectively).
Conclusions
The highest positive mechanical power delivered by the soft exosuit was reported in the ESLP condition, which showed also a significant reduction in both biological hip and knee joint power. Further, the ESLP condition had the highest average metabolic reduction among the powered conditions. Future work on autonomous hip exoskeletons may incorporate these considerations when designing effective control strategies.
PDF O. Araromi, C. J. Walsh, and R. J. Wood, “
Fabrication of Stretchable Composites with Anisotropic Electrical Conductivity for Compliant Pressure Transducers,” in
IEEE Sensors Conference 2016, Orlando, Florida, 2016.
Publisher's VersionAbstractWe present a simple fabrication approach for anisotropically conductive stretchable composites, towards novel flexible pressure transducers. Flexible electronic systems have gained great interest in recent years, and within this space, anisotropic conducting materials have been explored for enhanced sensing performance. However, current methods for producing these materials are complex or are limited to small fabrication areas. Our method uses film applicator coating to render commercially available conductive RTVs anisotropically conductive. A ratio of in-plane surface resistance to through-thickness resistance of 1010 was achieved using our method. Furthermore, we show that when a normal pressure is applied to such films, the in-plane resistance can be reduced by seven orders of magnitude for an applied pressure of 10 kPa. Hence these materials show great promise for the development of novel, robust pressure transducers.
PDF F. A. Panizzolo, et al., “
A biologically-inspired multi-joint soft exosuit that can reduce the energy cost of loaded walking,”
Journal of NeuroEngineering and Rehabilitation, vol. 13, no. 1, pp. 1-14, 2016.
Publisher's VersionAbstract
Carrying load alters normal walking, imposes additional stress to the musculoskeletal system, and results in an increase in energy consumption and a consequent earlier onset of fatigue. This phenomenon is largely due to increased work requirements in lower extremity joints, in turn requiring higher muscle activation. The aim of this work was to assess the biomechanical and physiological effects of a multi-joint soft exosuit that applies assistive torques to the biological hip and ankle joints during loaded walking.
PDF S. Lee, S. Crea, P. Malcolm, I. B. Galiana, A. T. Asbeck, and C. J. Walsh, “
Controlling Negative and Positive Power at the Ankle with a Soft Exosuit,” in
IEEE International Conference on Robotics and Automation (ICRA), Stockholm, Sweden, 2016, pp. 3509-3515.
Publisher's VersionAbstractThe soft exosuit is a new approach for applying assistive forces over the wearer's body through load paths configured by the textile architecture. In this paper, we present a body-worn lower-extremity soft exosuit and a new control approach that can independently control the level of assistance that is provided during negative- and positive-power periods at the ankle. The exosuit was designed to create load paths assisting ankle plantarflexion and hip flexion, and the actuation system transmits forces from the motors to the suit via Bowden cables. A load cell and two gyro sensors per leg are used to measure real-time data, and the controller performs position control of the cable on a step-by-step basis with respect to the power delivered to the wearer's ankle by controlling two force parameters, the pretension and the active force. Human subjects testing results demonstrate that the controller is capable of modulating the amount of power delivered to the ankle joint. Also, significant reductions in metabolic rate (11%-15%) were observed, which indicates the potential of the proposed control approach to provide benefit to the wearer during walking.
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