@ARTICLE{7394183, 
author={Y. Ding and I. Galiana and A. Asbeck and S. De Rossi and J. Bae and T. Santos and V. Araujo and S. Lee and K. Holt and C. Walsh}, 
journal={IEEE Transactions on Neural Systems and Rehabilitation Engineering}, 
title={Biomechanical and Physiological Evaluation of Multi-joint Assistance with Soft Exosuits}, 
year={2016}, 
volume={PP}, 
number={99}, 
pages={1-1}, 
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 ± 0.04 W/kg and 0.67 ± 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.}, 
keywords={Actuators;Cable shielding;Force;Hip;Legged locomotion;Muscles;Assistive robotics;biomechanics;human-robot interaction;soft exosuits}, 
doi={10.1109/TNSRE.2016.2523250}, 
ISSN={1534-4320}, 
month={},}