The system adapts the exosuit to a new task in seconds. Only a human is capable of this.

Researchers from the Harvard School of Engineering and Applied Sciences. John A. Paulson developed a new

an approach in which the assistance of a robotic exosuit can be adapted to the individual characteristics of a person and real-life walking tasks. 

People rarely walk at a constant speed andone slope. We move at different speeds in the city during rush hour, on a walk in the park and always on a changing surface. Height, age, and muscle strength, and sometimes nerve or muscle disorders, such as stroke or Parkinson's disease, also affect walking.

The variability of factors and tasks is seriousa problem when developing smart exosuits that should help a person move in real conditions. Today, setting up a wearable robotic assistant for human walking requires several hours of manual or automatic work. This is tiring for healthy people and simply impossible for elderly patients.

Researchers from the Harvard School of Engineering andapplied sciences named after. John A. Paulson (SEAS) have developed a new approach in which a robotic exosuit can be adapted to different real-world walking tasks for a specific person in a matter of seconds. The new bioinspired system uses ultrasound measurements of muscle dynamics to develop a personalized care profile targeted to specific activities. 

“Our approach allows relatively fastcreate personalized care profiles that actually benefit the person while walking, ”explains Robert D. Howe, professor of engineering and co-author of the article.

Conventional systems and exosuits for this are notable. This is familiar to us, but when a person walks, he analyzes many factors and makes a decision about each new step in a split second, sending commands to the muscles and the whole body.

During the study, scientists usedultrasound to directly measure what exactly a person's muscles do when performing different tasks - when walking at different inclines or speeds. The data obtained was used to create a smart exosuit system. The results of the work are published by the journal Science Robotics.

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