Design and Testing of a Wearable Lower-Limb Exoskeleton for Investigating Falls Prevention

Wearable robots that can support balance and prevent falls hold great promise to increase the longevity and quality of life of the older population. However, a lack of understanding of human–robot dynamic interactions and users’ reactions to robot interventions can limit the functionality and usability of these robots. A wearable lower-limb robot was developed to study different strategies to proactively prevent falls during obstacle navigation and to investigate human–robot interactions and users’ reactions to different intervention parameters. A novel non-anthropomorphic architecture was designed for robot legs to allow the direct modulation of foot-placement position in the sagittal plane, using only a single active degree of freedom per leg. Three participants completed a series of walking trials wearing the robot, with different levels of robot intervention. The developed robot was able to successfully modify users’ stride length (e.g., 6–12% and 7.5–20% change in step length for 12 Nm robot hip flexion and extension torques, respectively) in the desired direction, indicating the possibility for assisted balance during obstacle navigation through foot-placement modulation. The measurements show that users’ reactions to the robot intervention is subject-specific and time-varying but, in all cases, plays a considerable role in the final movement trajectory. Controllers of the balance assistance robots must take into account the user’s personalized response to different intervention parameters, to improve functionality, efficiency and user comfort.