Objective. Results of a device-training for nonambulatory individuals with thoracic and lumbar spinal cord injury (SCI) using a powered exoskeleton for technically assisted mobility with regard to the achieved level of control of the system after training, user satisfaction, and effects on quality of life (QoL). Methods. Observational single centre study with a 4-week to 5-week intensive inpati...

Neuroprosthetic technology and robotic exoskeletons are being developed to facilitate stepping, reduce muscle efforts, and promote motor recovery. Nevertheless, the guidance forces of an exoskeleton may influence the sensory inputs, sensorimotor interactions and resulting muscle activity patterns during stepping. The aim of this study was to report the muscle activation patterns in a sample of ...

Limited research has been done on exoskeletons to enable faster movements of the lower extremities. An exoskeleton’s mechanism can actually hinder agility by adding weight, inertia and friction to the legs; compensating inertia through control is particularly difficult due to instability issues. The added inertia will reduce the natural frequency of the legs, probably leading to lower step freq...

This paper presents an insole FSR (Force Sensing Resistor) to dynamically detect weight variations in an exoskeleton system. The proposed methodology is intended for tasks of lifting and lowering heavy weights with an industrial exoskeleton to substantially reduce spinal loads during these manual handling activities. Instead of extensively placing high-dense force sensors by covering the whole ...

Kinematic and dynamic models of a human body are presented. The models intend to represent paraplegics wearing a powered exoskeleton. The proposed exoskeleton fully controls the motion of the hip and knee joints, i.e., each lower extremity contains four actuators, three at the hip joint and one at the knee joint. A spring-loaded ankle-foot orthosis completes the exoskeleton. The kinematic model...

We developed a prototype of an exoskeletal patient simulator that allows clinical trainees to experience and learn about ankle disorders related to hemiplegia. The exoskeleton exerts abnormal joint torques by tendon mechanisms while realizing complex ankle movements and realistic bone and skin features. Using this exoskeleton, we simulated the resistances of spasticity and clonus, which are typ...

It has been thought that phosphorus in biominerals made of amorphous calcium carbonate (ACC) might be related to ACC formation, but no such phosphorus-containing compounds have ever been identified. Crustaceans use ACC biominerals in exoskeleton and gastroliths so that they will have easy access to calcium carbonate inside the body before and after molting. We have identified phosphoenolpyruvat...

This paper describes a brain-machine interface for the online control of a powered lower-limb exoskeleton based on electroencephalogram (EEG) signals recorded over the user’s sensorimotor cortical areas. We train a binary decoder that can distinguish two different mental states, which is applied in a cascaded manner to efficiently control the exoskeleton in three different directions: walk fron...

The bipedal robot is one of the most attractive robots types given its similarity to the locomotion of human beings and its ability to assist people to walk during rehabilitation. This review summarizes the chronological historical development of bipedal robots and introduces some current popular bipedal robots age. Then, the basic theory-stability control and key technology-motion planning of ...

Exoskeletons can be utilized for rehabilitation purposes as well as for assistance and augmentation of motion of patients with disabilities, workers, the elderly and even healthy people. Compared to powered solutions, unpowered passive exoskeletons have been shown to have significantly higher chances of end user acceptance, because of simpler design, no complex electronics and potentially lower...