Balance aids used in everyday life and in rehabilitation centers are useful but far from perfect. Sticks, walkers, crutches, and hand rails change posture and prevent you from using your hands when doing things like opening doors, carrying groceries, or picking up the phone. In addition, more advanced tools, such as mobile body weight support systems or robotic trainers, take up a lot of space or can only be used in specific environments. Under the leadership of Professor Heike Vallery, Andrew Berry, Daniel Lemus and Saher Jabeen, researchers from TU Delft‘s BioMechanical Engineering department, developed the GyBAR: a backpack-like portable robot that supports balance during rehabilitation. The backpack contains a gyroscopic actuator – a rotating motor that can be repositioned with electric motors – that supports the balance in various activities and in different environments, while leaving the hands free. The results of the first experiments with humans and potential end users have been published in Scientific Reports by Nature.

See the article Controller synthesis and clinical exploration of wearable gyroscopic actuators to support human balance

Risks of falling

Falling is the leading cause of accident-related injury in all age groups, but it is especially dangerous for people who suffer from conditions that affect motor skills or lead to sensory or cognitive impairment. Adults over the age of 65 are at great risk of serious injury in the event of a fall; in addition, if they sustain a hip fracture, they have a 25 percent chance of dying from their injuries within six to 12 months of the fall. For the development of an auxiliary device that supports balance and leaves the hands free, while at the same time being able to automatically detect and correct instability, portable robotics offers many possibilities.

Inspiration from space

The inspiration for GyBAR’s development came from space: satellites are able to change their orientation in space without using force or moment relative to their environment (Figure 1). Moment can be applied to a satellite (or to the human body) by changing the angular momentum of internal flywheels, realizing or preventing a certain rotation. One technique uses the so-called gyroscopic effect, which can be observed with spinning tops, which resist the effect of gravity (Figure 2). Researchers at TU Delft have succeeded in building an actuator based on the gyroscopic effect, which is usually applied in sensors (think of the gyroscope sensor in a mobile phone, which measures movements).