Systematic Evaluation of a Knee Exoskeleton Misalignment Compensation Mechanism Using a Robotic Dummy Leg.

The objective and quantitative assessment of physical human-exoskeletons interaction (pHEI) represents a pressing necessity in the wearable robots field. This process remains of difficult execution, especially for early stage devices, in which the inclusion of human testing could pose ethical and safety concerns. This manuscript proposes a methodology for pHEI assessment based on an active dummy leg named Leg Replica, which is able to sense interaction forces while wearing an exoskeleton.

Re-defining wearable robots: a multidisciplinary approach towards a unified terminology.

Effective communication is especially important in the wearable robots (WRs) community, which encloses a great variety of devices across different application domains, e.g., healthcare, occupational, and consumer.

Relevance of hazards in exoskeleton applications: a survey-based enquiry.

Exoskeletons are becoming the reference technology for assistance and augmentation of human motor functions in a wide range of application domains. Unfortunately, the exponential growth of this sector has not been accompanied by a rigorous risk assessment (RA) process, which is necessary to identify the major aspects concerning the safety and impact of this new technology on humans. This situation may seriously hamper the market uptake of new products.

A mechatronic leg replica to benchmark human-exoskeleton physical interactions.

Evaluating human-exoskeleton interaction typically requires experiments with human subjects, which raises safety issues and entails time-consuming testing procedures. This paper presents a mechatronic replica of a human leg, which was designed to quantify physical interaction dynamics between exoskeletons and human limbs without the need for human testing. In the first part of this work, we present the mechanical, electronic, sensory system and software solutions integrated in our leg replica prototype.

A method to quantify the reduction of back and hip muscle fatigue of lift-support exoskeletons.

Cumulative back muscle fatigue plays a role in the occurrence of low-back injuries in occupations that require repetitive lifting of heavy loads and working in forward leaning postures. Lift-support exoskeletons have the potential to reduce back and hip muscle activity, thereby delaying the onset of fatigue in these muscles. Therefore, exoskeletons are being considered a potentially important tool to further reduce workload-related injuries.

Legged locomotion over irregular terrains: state of the art of human and robot performance.

Legged robotic technologies have moved out of the lab to operate in real environments, characterized by a wide variety of unpredictable irregularities and disturbances, all this in close proximity with humans. Demonstrating the ability of current robots to move robustly and reliably in these conditions is becoming essential to prove their safe operation. Here, we report an in-depth literature review aimed at verifying the existence of common or agreed protocols and metrics to test the performance of legged system in realistic environments.

Characterization and Evaluation of Human-Exoskeleton Interaction Dynamics: A Review.

Exoskeletons and exosuits have witnessed unprecedented growth in recent years, especially in the medical and industrial sectors. In order to be successfully integrated into the current society, these devices must comply with several commercialization rules and safety standards. Due to their intrinsic coupling with human limbs, one of the main challenges is to test and prove the quality of physical interaction with humans.