Design, Development and Evaluation of Quasi-Passive Wearable Assistive Devices
Lamers, Erik
0000-0003-3377-876X
:
2020-09-21
Abstract
Wearable assistive devices (exoskeletons, exosuits and prostheses) can assist
human movement to achieve a variety of goals such as alleviating musculoskeletal
disorders, compensating for a missing limb, offloading muscles, or reducing muscular
fatigue. Research and development of new wearable assistive devices has grown
significantly over recent years, but there are open questions about how users respond to
these devices, and how to design devices to improve assistance and accelerate adoption
by users. In this work I model, develop and evaluate wearable assistive devices for the
low-back (i.e. textile-based exosuit), and evaluate a commercially available lower-limb
adaptive ankle prosthesis. The main focus of this work is understanding how users
respond to wearable assistive devices (e.g. in term of changes to muscle activity,
fatigue, or gait mechanics), and how to better design them to improve user assistance,
comfort and adoption.