Guangdong Provincial Key Lab of Robotics and Intelligent System, Shenzhen Institute of Advanced Technology, Chinese Academy of Sciences, Shenzhen, Guangdong, China.
CAS Key Laboratory of Human-Machine Intelligence-Synergy Systems, Shenzhen Institute of Advanced Technology, Shenzhen, Guangdong, China.
Technol Health Care. 2021;29(4):837-841. doi: 10.3233/THC-202423.
Population aging is now a universal trend. Many elderly persons can only conduct limited and short time walking because of age-related skeletal muscle decline of the lower limbs. The wearable device for walking assistance is beneficial to improve the life quality of the elderly.
This study aimed to propose a soft exosuit for walking assistance of the elderly and verify its feasibility.
The wearable structure and control strategy were presented. The performance of the soft exosuit was tested by force tracking evaluation and metabolic cost test.
The mean error of the measured and target peak force was 1.1%. The metabolic cost with assistance on while wearing the exosuit was reduced by 9.2% compared with that in locomotion assistance off. The reduction of assistance on was 7.1% compared with no exosuit.
The proposed soft exosuit has the potential to improve the walking efficiency of the elderly.
人口老龄化是一个普遍趋势。许多老年人由于下肢与年龄相关的骨骼肌衰退，只能进行有限的短时间行走。可穿戴式步行辅助设备有助于提高老年人的生活质量。
本研究旨在提出一种用于老年人步行辅助的软体套装，并验证其可行性。
介绍了可穿戴结构和控制策略。通过力跟踪评估和代谢成本测试来测试软体套装的性能。
测量和目标峰值力的平均误差为 1.1%。与不穿软体套装时相比，在穿软体套装时辅助行走时的代谢成本降低了 9.2%。与不穿软体套装时相比，辅助行走时的降低幅度为 7.1%。
所提出的软体套装具有提高老年人步行效率的潜力。
