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Coupled exoskeleton assistance simplifies control and maintains metabolic benefits: A simulation study.

ABSTRACT: Assistive exoskeletons can reduce the metabolic cost of walking, and recent advances in exoskeleton device design and control have resulted in large metabolic savings. Most exoskeleton devices provide assistance at either the ankle or hip. Exoskeletons that assist multiple joints have the potential to provide greater metabolic savings, but can require many actuators and complicated controllers, making it difficult to design effective assistance. Coupled assistance, when two or more joints are assisted using one actuator or control signal, could reduce control dimensionality while retaining metabolic benefits. However, it is unknown which combinations of assisted joints are most promising and if there are negative consequences associated with coupled assistance. Since designing assistance with human experiments is expensive and time-consuming, we used musculoskeletal simulation to evaluate metabolic savings from multi-joint assistance and identify promising joint combinations. We generated 2D muscle-driven simulations of walking while simultaneously optimizing control strategies for simulated lower-limb exoskeleton assistive devices to minimize metabolic cost. Each device provided assistance either at a single joint or at multiple joints using massless, ideal actuators. To assess if control could be simplified for multi-joint exoskeletons, we simulated different control strategies in which the torque provided at each joint was either controlled independently or coupled between joints. We compared the predicted optimal torque profiles and changes in muscle and total metabolic power consumption across the single joint and multi-joint assistance strategies. We found multi-joint devices-whether independent or coupled-provided 50% greater metabolic savings than single joint devices. The coupled multi-joint devices were able to achieve most of the metabolic savings produced by independently-controlled multi-joint devices. Our results indicate that device designers could simplify multi-joint exoskeleton designs by reducing the number of torque control parameters through coupling, while still maintaining large reductions in metabolic cost.

SUBMITTER: Bianco NA

PROVIDER: S-EPMC8730392 | biostudies-literature |

REPOSITORIES: biostudies-literature

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Project description:BackgroundMany gait impairments are characterized by asymmetry and result in reduced mobility. Exoskeletons could be useful for restoring gait symmetry by assisting only one leg. However, we still have limited understanding of the effects of unilateral exoskeleton assistance. Our aim was to compare the effects of unilateral and bilateral assistance using a within-subject study design.MethodsEleven participants walked in different exoskeleton conditions. In the Unilateral conditions, only one leg was assisted. In Bilateral Matched Total Work, half of the assistance from the Unilateral conditions was applied to both legs such that the bilateral sum was equal to that of the Unilateral conditions. In Bilateral Matched Work Per Leg, the same assistance as in the Unilateral conditions was provided to both legs such that the bilateral sum was the double of that of the Unilateral conditions. In the Powered-Off condition, no assistance was provided. We measured metabolic energy consumption, exoskeleton mechanics and kinematics.ResultsOn average, the Unilateral, Bilateral Matched Total Work and Bilateral Matched Work Per Leg conditions reduced the metabolic rate by 7, 11 and 15%, respectively, compared with the Powered-Off condition. A possible explanation for why the Unilateral conditions effectively reduced the metabolic rate could be that they caused only very little asymmetry in gait biomechanics, except at the ankle and in the horizontal center-of-mass velocity. We found the highest ratio of metabolic rate reduction versus positive work assistance with bilateral assistance and low work per leg (Bilateral Matched Total Work). Statistical analysis indicated that assistance symmetry and assistance per leg are more important than the bilateral summed assistance for reducing the metabolic rate of walking.ConclusionsThese data bridge the gap between conclusions from studies with unilateral and bilateral exoskeletons and inform how unilateral assistance can be used to influence gait parameters, such as center-of-mass velocity.

Project description:BackgroundLoad carriage is common in a wide range of professions, but prolonged load carriage is associated with increased fatigue and overuse injuries. Exoskeletons could improve the quality of life of these professionals by reducing metabolic cost to combat fatigue and reducing muscle activity to prevent injuries. Current exoskeletons have reduced the metabolic cost of loaded walking by up to 22% relative to walking in the device with no assistance when assisting one or two joints. Greater metabolic reductions may be possible with optimized assistance of the entire leg.MethodsWe used human-in the-loop optimization to optimize hip-knee-ankle exoskeleton assistance with no additional load, a light load (15% of body weight), and a heavy load (30% of body weight) for three participants. All loads were applied through a weight vest with an attached waist belt. We measured metabolic cost, exoskeleton assistance, kinematics, and muscle activity. We performed Friedman's tests to analyze trends across worn loads and paired t-tests to determine whether changes from the unassisted conditions to the assisted conditions were significant.ResultsExoskeleton assistance reduced the metabolic cost of walking relative to walking in the device without assistance for all tested conditions. Exoskeleton assistance reduced the metabolic cost of walking by 48% with no load (p = 0.05), 41% with the light load (p = 0.01), and 43% with the heavy load (p = 0.04). The smaller metabolic reduction with the light load may be due to insufficient participant training or lack of optimizer convergence. The total applied positive power was similar for all tested conditions, and the positive knee power decreased slightly as load increased. Optimized torque timing parameters were consistent across participants and load conditions while optimized magnitude parameters varied.ConclusionsWhole-leg exoskeleton assistance can reduce the metabolic cost of walking while carrying a range of loads. The consistent optimized timing parameters across participants and conditions suggest that metabolic cost reductions are sensitive to torque timing. The variable torque magnitude parameters could imply that torque magnitude should be customized to the individual, or that there is a range of useful torque magnitudes. Future work should test whether applying the load to the exoskeleton rather than the person's torso results in larger benefits.

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Coupled exoskeleton assistance simplifies control and maintains metabolic benefits: A simulation study.

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