Muscle coordination and recruitment during squat assistance using a robotic ankle-foot exoskeleton.

Squatting is an intensive activity routinely performed in the workplace to lift and lower loads. The effort to perform a squat can decrease using an exoskeleton that considers individual worker's differences and assists them with a customized solution, namely, personalized assistance. Designing such an exoskeleton could be improved by understanding how the user's muscle activity changes when assistance is provided.

Foot contact forces can be used to personalize a wearable robot during human walking.

Individuals with below-knee amputation (BKA) experience increased physical effort when walking, and the use of a robotic ankle-foot prosthesis (AFP) can reduce such effort. The walking effort could be further reduced if the robot is personalized to the wearer using human-in-the-loop (HIL) optimization of wearable robot parameters. The conventional physiological measurement, however, requires a long estimation time, hampering real-time optimization due to the limited experimental time budget.

Reducing Squat Physical Effort Using Personalized Assistance From an Ankle Exoskeleton.

Exoskeletons can assist humans during squatting and the assistance has the potential to reduce the physical demands. Although several squat assistance methods are available, the effect of personalized assistance on physical effort has not been examined. We hypothesize that personalized assistance will reduce the physical effort of squatting.

Visual guidance can help with the use of a robotic exoskeleton during human walking.

Walking is an important activity that supports the health-related quality of life, and for those who need assistance, robotic devices are available to help. Recent progress in wearable robots has identified the importance of customizing the assistance provided by the robot to the individual, resulting in robot adaptation to the human. However, current implementations minimize the role of human adaptation to the robot, for example, by the users modifying their movements based on the provided robot assistance.