...
- To prevent and reduce musculoskeletal injuries.
- To augment positive work done by the muscles and reduce the physical burden.
- You can see the details of this project on http://www.darpa.mil/Our_Work/DSO/Programs/Warrior_Web.aspx.
Harvard Exosuit
In order to develop an under-suit that doesn’t hinder the wearer’s free movement, researchers are trying to make it soft and deformable, but still capable of applying force to body joints. The Harvard exosuit is an example of a new approach to creating an under-suit in a soft and deformable manner.
...
- Experimental data proved that it can help loaded walking by reducing metabolic cost.
- This suit applies force to lower limb joints through cables driven by actuators in the backpack.
Challenges
As the Exosuit exosuit tries to assist human gait with a deformable structure, there are many challenges in developing the exosuitits development. The challenges are:
- It is difficult to analyze the effectiveness of the suit.
- It is difficult to find the optimal input force for actuators to reduce the metabolic cost.
- It is difficult to identify the effect of changes in design parameters.
...