DARPA Testing Lightweight Exoskeletons on Soldiers

A lightweight exoskeleton developed by researchers from Harvard University's Wyss Institute for Biologically Inspired Engineering under a contract from DARPA is undergoing performance testing by the U.S. Army Research Laboratory (ARL) in Maryland. Soldiers wear the prototype underneath battle gear and hike a three mile course that includes roadways as well as rugged, wooded terrain. ARL technicians monitor the soldiers' muscle activity, stride lengths and frequency, and energy expenditure. The goal is to allow soldiers to walk longer distances carrying heavy loads with less effort, while minimizing the risk of injury.

Transcript

00:00:01 the purpose of the device is to augment some of the work that the soldier is doing while they're carrying a heavy [Music] load we're in the spear Soldier uh performance equipment and advanced research facilities biomechanics lab so what you saw today was an evaluation of a prototype device that was developed by the um Harvard whis Institute team for

00:00:26 the dark of warrior web program um so the purpose of the device is to augment some of the work that the soldier is doing while they're carrying a heavy load to try to alleviate some of um the muscle strain and also the energy expenditure that they have during that task so that they are more prepared for um performing other tasks at the end of a long uh loow Carriage Mission okay

00:00:47 ready all right we'll follow you they are walking 3 miles through our Cross Country course which consists of a paved roadway and then also um 2 miles of semi-rugged terrain to give them a more operationally uh relevant envir enironment to navigate through the tests that we're doing here are to evaluate the performance of the system so whether determining whether or not it actually

00:01:07 does reduce energy expenditure um or if it helps them walk faster um during the low Carriage task the soldiers wore the system last week in training over the course of uh 3 days with increasing loads and um took them a little bit of time to initially get used to it but several of them reported to me on U Friday that they felt like they were getting used to the

00:01:31 system and that they could feel how it was helping them my name is specialist katchor we're at the abine per grounds Army of research fa what we saw me uh conducting I say trials for the um mechanical suit that's supposed to help people Rock and prevent muscular scoliosis it it's like a rubber band it when uh you can feel the tension but when you take a step helps pull your leg

00:01:57 up and helps releve tension off the muscle usually with when you don't wear the machine you feel all that weight on your muscles and so there's there's a little bit of the difference here I'm not about sure about performance but I think medically it could help a lot of soldiers out prevent muscle tears and other future injuries that has to do with like heavy lifting rucking I think

00:02:17 it could help them medically they've been working on the development of this particular device for about 3 years now so um this is the first time they've brought this version of the system to us for testing and then they'll be returning again in October and they'll be doing the same protocol but with an extra lap of the course so we'll be doing 6 miles

00:02:38 [Music] total so was that a comfortable pace for you at the very beginning oh yes sir where we were all kind of running to keep up yes sir that that's my normal uh Ruck Pace yes