A clever lightweight design that increases efficiency a small amount, but just enough to make a difference,
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Until recently, no exosuit design had succeeded in reducing the amount of energy required for both types of motion. Earlier generations of such suits, also known as wearable robots, had stumbled in that challenge because of the different biomechanical actions required for walking versus running. Now researchers have developed a soft device that can automatically detect whether the wearer is walking or running and provide the appropriate assistance for either movement.
“After wearing the system for 15 minutes or so, you start to question if it’s really helping at all, because you just feel like you’re walking,” says David Perry, a robotics engineer at the Wyss Institute for Biologically Inspired Engineering at Harvard University. “Once you shut it off, however, your legs suddenly feel heavy, and you realize how much it was helping. It’s a lot like stepping off the end of one of those moving sidewalks at the airport.”
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