
Researchers developed a new approach in which robotic exosuit assistance can be calibrated to an individual and adapt to a variety of real-world walking tasks.
Credit: Biodesign Lab, Harvard John A. Paulson School of Engineering and Applied Science at Harvard University
Ultrasound measurements of muscle dynamics provide customized, activity-specific assistance
People rarely walk at a constant speed and a single incline. We change speed when rushing to the next appointment, catching a crosswalk signal, or going for a casual stroll in the park. Slopes change all the time too, whether we’re going for a hike or up a ramp into a building. In addition to environmental variably, how we walk is influenced by sex, height, age, and muscle strength, and sometimes by neural or muscular disorders such as stroke or Parkinson’s Disease.
This human and task variability is a major challenge in designing wearable robotics to assist or augment walking in real-world conditions. To date, customizing wearable robotic assistance to an individual’s walking requires hours of manual or automatic tuning — a tedious task for healthy individuals and often impossible for older adults or clinical patients.
Now, researchers from the Harvard John A. Paulson School of Engineering and Applied Sciences (SEAS) and Harvard’s Wyss Institute for Biologically Inspired Engineering have developed a new approach in which robotic exosuit assistance can be calibrated to an individual and adapt to a variety of real-world walking tasks in a matter of seconds. The bioinspired system uses ultrasound measurements of muscle dynamics to develop a personalized and activity-specific assistance profile for users of the exosuit.
“Our muscle-based approach enables relatively rapid generation of individualized assistance profiles that provide real benefit to the person walking,” said Robert D. Howe, Ph.D., the Abbott and James Lawrence Professor of Engineering, and co-author of the paper.
The research is published in Science Robotics.
Previous bioinspired attempts at developing individualized assistance profiles for robotic exosuits focused on the dynamic movements of the limbs of the wearer. The SEAS researchers took a different approach. The research was a collaboration between Howe’s Harvard Biorobotics Laboratory, which has extensive experience in ultrasound imaging and real-time image processing, and the Harvard Biodesign Lab, run by Conor J. Walsh, Ph.D., Associate Faculty member at the Wyss Institute, and the Paul A. Maeder Professor of Engineering and Applied Sciences at SEAS, which develops soft wearable robots for augmenting and restoring human performance.
“We used ultrasound to look under the skin and directly measured what the user’s muscles were doing during several walking tasks,” said Richard Nuckols, Ph.D., a Postdoctoral Research Associate at SEAS and the Wyss Institute and co-first author of the paper. “Our muscles and tendons have compliance which means there is not necessarily a direct mapping between the movement of the limbs and that of the underlying muscles driving their motion.”
The research team strapped a portable ultrasound system to the calves of participants and imaged their muscles as they performed a series of walking tasks.
“From these pre-recorded images, we estimated the assistive force to be applied in parallel with the calf muscles to offset the additional work they need to perform during the push off phase of the walking cycle,” said co-first author Krithika Swaminathan, , who worked on Walsh’s team at SEAS and the Wyss Institute, and is a graduate student at SEAS and the Graduate School of Arts and Sciences (GSAS).
The new system only needs a few seconds of walking, even one stride may be sufficient, to capture the muscle’s profile.

This video describes how ultrasound measurements of calf muscle activity are used to personalize soft exosuit performance in individual users.
Credit: Biodesign Lab, Harvard John A. Paulson School of Engineering and Applied Science at Harvard University
For each of the ultrasound-generated profiles, the researchers then measured how much metabolic energy the person used during walking with and without the exosuit. They found that the muscle-based assistance provided by the exosuit significantly reduced the metabolic energy of walking across a range of walking speeds and inclines.
The exosuit also applied lower assistance force to achieve the same or improved metabolic energy benefit than previous published studies.
“By measuring the muscle directly, we can work more intuitively with the person using the exosuit,” said Sangjun Lee, a graduate student at SEAS and GSAS and co-first author of the study. “With this approach, the exosuit isn’t overpowering the wearer, it’s working cooperatively with them.”
When tested in real-world situations, the exosuit was able to quickly adapt to changes in walking speed and incline.
This approach may help support the adoption of wearable robotics in real-world, dynamic situations by enabling comfortable, tailored, and adaptive assistance.
CONOR WALSH
Next, the research team aims to test the system making constant, real-time adjustments.
“This approach may help support the adoption of wearable robotics in real-world, dynamic situations by enabling comfortable, tailored, and adaptive assistance,” said Walsh, the senior author of the paper.
Original Article: A personalized exosuit for real-world walking
More from: Harvard John A. Paulson School of Engineering and Applied Sciences | Wyss Institute for Biologically Inspired Engineering
The Latest Updates from Bing News & Google News
Go deeper with Bing News on:
Personalized exosuit
- Texas rejects more than 5,000 personalized plates in 2022: ‘[email protected],’ ‘LA KILLA’ among them
The Texas Department of Motor Vehicles announced thousands of personalized license plates were rejected from January to October 2022. Data for November and December was not available yet.
- The Intersection of Neuromodulation & Personalized Medicine
Today, however, the science is experiencing what the NIH has described as a “renaissance” as the concept of personalized medicine continues to evolve into a significant collaborative role with ...
- Things Remembered retailer of personalized gifts is closing its corporate office in Richmond Heights
The company was known for small stores usually found in malls that sold personalized gifts, like an engraved-key chain or photo frame. It filed for Chapter 11 bankruptcy protection in 2019 and was ...
- German Bionic debuts its lightest powered exosuit to date at CES 2023
German Bionic, the robotic exoskeleton startup behind the Cray X, will be showing off two new posture-protecting products at the Consumer Electronics Show in Las Vegas, Nevada this week.
- German Bionic debuts its lightest powered exosuit to date at CES 2023
The Apogee is the company's latest and lightest powered exosuit built for commercial ... positioning as they work and offers "data-based, personalized ergonomic insights, as well as assessments ...
Go deeper with Google Headlines on:
Personalized exosuit
[google_news title=”” keyword=”personalized exosuit” num_posts=”5″ blurb_length=”0″ show_thumb=”left”]
Go deeper with Bing News on:
Robotic exosuit
- robotic camera
BBC News in London is no exception, and embraced the future in 2013 to the extent of replacing its flesh-and-blood camera operators with robotic cameras. On the face of it this made sense ...
- Meet Golfi, the robot that plays putt-putt
By Andrew Paul | Published Jan 3, 2023 4:00 PM The first robot to sink an impressive hole-in-one pulled off its fairway feat back in 2016. But the newest automated golfer looks like it’s coming ...
- German Bionic debuts its lightest powered exosuit to date at CES 2023
German Bionic, the robotic exoskeleton startup behind the Cray X, will be showing off two new posture-protecting products at the Consumer Electronics Show in Las Vegas, Nevada this week. The Apogee is ...
- Breathe along with the robot pillow
From the team that brought you the weird and wonderful robot cat pillow comes an equally weird and wonderful breathing pillow. Japanese boutique robotics firm Yukai Engineering returns to CES with ...
- German Bionic debuts its lightest powered exosuit to date at CES 2023
German Bionic, the robotic exoskeleton startup behind the ... The Apogee is the company's latest and lightest powered exosuit built for commercial and industrial use while the Smart SafetyVest ...
Go deeper with Google Headlines on:
Robotic exosuit
[google_news title=”” keyword=”robotic exosuit” num_posts=”5″ blurb_length=”0″ show_thumb=”left”]