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The Myosuit: Bi-articular Anti-gravity Exosuit That Reduces Hip Extensor Activity in Sitting Transfers

Muscle weakness—which can result from neurological injuries, genetic disorders, or typical aging—can affect a person's mobility and quality of life. For many people with muscle weakness, assistive devices provide the means to regain mobility and independence. These devices range from well-estab...

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Autores principales: Schmidt, Kai, Duarte, Jaime E., Grimmer, Martin, Sancho-Puchades, Alejandro, Wei, Haiqi, Easthope, Chris S., Riener, Robert
Formato: Online Artículo Texto
Lenguaje:English
Publicado: Frontiers Media S.A. 2017
Materias:
Acceso en línea:https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC5663860/
https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pubmed/29163120
http://dx.doi.org/10.3389/fnbot.2017.00057
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author Schmidt, Kai
Duarte, Jaime E.
Grimmer, Martin
Sancho-Puchades, Alejandro
Wei, Haiqi
Easthope, Chris S.
Riener, Robert
author_facet Schmidt, Kai
Duarte, Jaime E.
Grimmer, Martin
Sancho-Puchades, Alejandro
Wei, Haiqi
Easthope, Chris S.
Riener, Robert
author_sort Schmidt, Kai
collection PubMed
description Muscle weakness—which can result from neurological injuries, genetic disorders, or typical aging—can affect a person's mobility and quality of life. For many people with muscle weakness, assistive devices provide the means to regain mobility and independence. These devices range from well-established technology, such as wheelchairs, to newer technologies, such as exoskeletons and exosuits. For assistive devices to be used in everyday life, they must provide assistance across activities of daily living (ADLs) in an unobtrusive manner. This article introduces the Myosuit, a soft, wearable device designed to provide continuous assistance at the hip and knee joint when working with and against gravity in ADLs. This robotic device combines active and passive elements with a closed-loop force controller designed to behave like an external muscle (exomuscle) and deliver gravity compensation to the user. At 4.1 kg (4.6 kg with batteries), the Myosuit is one of the lightest untethered devices capable of delivering gravity support to the user's knee and hip joints. This article presents the design and control principles of the Myosuit. It describes the textile interface, tendon actuators, and a bi-articular, synergy-based approach for continuous assistance. The assistive controller, based on bi-articular force assistance, was tested with a single subject who performed sitting transfers, one of the most gravity-intensive ADLs. The results show that the control concept can successfully identify changes in the posture and assist hip and knee extension with up to 26% of the natural knee moment and up to 35% of the knee power. We conclude that the Myosuit's novel approach to assistance using a bi-articular architecture, in combination with the posture-based force controller, can effectively assist its users in gravity-intensive ADLs, such as sitting transfers.
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spelling pubmed-56638602017-11-21 The Myosuit: Bi-articular Anti-gravity Exosuit That Reduces Hip Extensor Activity in Sitting Transfers Schmidt, Kai Duarte, Jaime E. Grimmer, Martin Sancho-Puchades, Alejandro Wei, Haiqi Easthope, Chris S. Riener, Robert Front Neurorobot Neuroscience Muscle weakness—which can result from neurological injuries, genetic disorders, or typical aging—can affect a person's mobility and quality of life. For many people with muscle weakness, assistive devices provide the means to regain mobility and independence. These devices range from well-established technology, such as wheelchairs, to newer technologies, such as exoskeletons and exosuits. For assistive devices to be used in everyday life, they must provide assistance across activities of daily living (ADLs) in an unobtrusive manner. This article introduces the Myosuit, a soft, wearable device designed to provide continuous assistance at the hip and knee joint when working with and against gravity in ADLs. This robotic device combines active and passive elements with a closed-loop force controller designed to behave like an external muscle (exomuscle) and deliver gravity compensation to the user. At 4.1 kg (4.6 kg with batteries), the Myosuit is one of the lightest untethered devices capable of delivering gravity support to the user's knee and hip joints. This article presents the design and control principles of the Myosuit. It describes the textile interface, tendon actuators, and a bi-articular, synergy-based approach for continuous assistance. The assistive controller, based on bi-articular force assistance, was tested with a single subject who performed sitting transfers, one of the most gravity-intensive ADLs. The results show that the control concept can successfully identify changes in the posture and assist hip and knee extension with up to 26% of the natural knee moment and up to 35% of the knee power. We conclude that the Myosuit's novel approach to assistance using a bi-articular architecture, in combination with the posture-based force controller, can effectively assist its users in gravity-intensive ADLs, such as sitting transfers. Frontiers Media S.A. 2017-10-27 /pmc/articles/PMC5663860/ /pubmed/29163120 http://dx.doi.org/10.3389/fnbot.2017.00057 Text en Copyright © 2017 Schmidt, Duarte, Grimmer, Sancho-Puchades, Wei, Easthope and Riener. http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by/4.0/ This is an open-access article distributed under the terms of the Creative Commons Attribution License (CC BY). The use, distribution or reproduction in other forums is permitted, provided the original author(s) or licensor are credited and that the original publication in this journal is cited, in accordance with accepted academic practice. No use, distribution or reproduction is permitted which does not comply with these terms.
spellingShingle Neuroscience
Schmidt, Kai
Duarte, Jaime E.
Grimmer, Martin
Sancho-Puchades, Alejandro
Wei, Haiqi
Easthope, Chris S.
Riener, Robert
The Myosuit: Bi-articular Anti-gravity Exosuit That Reduces Hip Extensor Activity in Sitting Transfers
title The Myosuit: Bi-articular Anti-gravity Exosuit That Reduces Hip Extensor Activity in Sitting Transfers
title_full The Myosuit: Bi-articular Anti-gravity Exosuit That Reduces Hip Extensor Activity in Sitting Transfers
title_fullStr The Myosuit: Bi-articular Anti-gravity Exosuit That Reduces Hip Extensor Activity in Sitting Transfers
title_full_unstemmed The Myosuit: Bi-articular Anti-gravity Exosuit That Reduces Hip Extensor Activity in Sitting Transfers
title_short The Myosuit: Bi-articular Anti-gravity Exosuit That Reduces Hip Extensor Activity in Sitting Transfers
title_sort myosuit: bi-articular anti-gravity exosuit that reduces hip extensor activity in sitting transfers
topic Neuroscience
url https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC5663860/
https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pubmed/29163120
http://dx.doi.org/10.3389/fnbot.2017.00057
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