Our goal was to develop a powered orthosis for the lower limb that could comfortably provide external torque during human walking. We constructed the orthosis from a carbon fiber shell with hinge joint and two artificial pneumatic muscles. One artificial pneumatic muscle provided plantar flexion torque and one artificial pneumatic muscle provided dorsiflexion torque. We collected joint kinematic and artificial muscle force data as one healthy subject walked with the orthosis using proportional myoelectric control. Peak plantar flexor torque provided by the orthosis was 70 Nm and peak dorsiflexor torque provided by the orthosis was 38 Nm. Soleus and tibialis anterior EMG amplitudes changed in response to powered orthosis assistance. Future studies could use similiar powered orthoses to study biomechanics and motor adaptation during human walking or to assist gait rehabilitation after neurological injury.

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Американская компания Biophan Technologies разрабатывает вживляемый источник энергии, который будет перезаряжать батареи имплантируемых электронных стимуляторов сердца и дефибрилляторов, используя электричество, произведённое температурой тела пациента.

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Группа учёных из университета Мичигана (Michigan State University) создала материал, который может непосредственно преобразовывать тепловой градиент в электричество с невиданной ранее эффективностью.

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We present several biologically inspired concept designs and feasibility analyses for underwater swimming exoskeletons. These designs are biologically inspired, based on observations of dolphins, sea turtles, and penguins. Biologically inspired designs have the advantages of stealth, maneuverability, and a natural interface when compared to propeller driven underwater propulsion devices. We present a lower body concept, based on dolphin locomotion and an upper body concept based on sea turtle and penguin locomotion. The dolphin based concept has the advantages of using the wearer’s most powerful muscle groups, of being the most natural to swim with, and of leaving the user’s hands free for other tasks. The sea-turtle based concept has the advantage of novelty and may have appeal as a recreational device. We predict that with actuation and energy storage components available today, an exoskeleton that produces a cruising speed of over 1 m/s and a top speed of over 1.5 m/s is feasible. We estimate that cruising at 1 m/s can be achieved with less than 504 Watts power consumption, which translates into 2.4 kg of off-the-shelf silver-zinc batteries per hour of operation.

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We have been developing exoskeleton systems to assist the motion of physically weak persons such as elderly, disabled, and injured persons. The proposed exoskeletons are controlled basically based on the electromyogram (EMG) signals. Even though the EMG signals contain very important information, however, it is not very easy to predict the user’s upper-limb motion (elbow and shoulder motion) based on the EMG signals in real-time because of the difficulty in using the EMG signals as the controller input signals. In this paper, we propose a control method for a 3DOF exoskeleton system for human upper-limb motion assist considering the effect of bi-articular muscles.

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