By Tami Freeman

Wearable robotic systems have great potential for assisting locomotion during clinical rehabilitation, as well as use in recreation and to ease demanding occupational tasks. Walking patterns, however, vary according to a person’s age, height and physiology, may be affected by neural or muscular disorders, and change in different environments. As such, there’s a need for wearable robotics that can customize walking assistance to each user and task.

To address this need, researchers at Harvard University have developed a novel robotic ankle exosuit that uses ultrasound measurements recorded during walking to tune the level of assistance to an individual’s own muscle dynamics and walking task. The team – from Robert Howe’s Harvard Biorobotics Laboratory and the Harvard Biodesign Lab run by Conor Walsh – describes this new muscle-based assistance (MBA) strategy in Science Robotics.

The researchers predict that such personalized assistance should improve exosuit performance and support the adoption of wearable robotics in real-world, dynamic locomotor tasks. “By measuring the muscle directly, we can work more intuitively with the person using the exosuit,” explains co-first author Sangjun Lee in a press statement. “With this approach, the exosuit isn’t overpowering the wearer, it’s working co-operatively with them.”