Smart Robotic Exoskeleton Predicts & Prevents the Elderly from Falling
The first smart exoskeleton that recognizes the loss of balance - and prevents falling - has been developed by researchers in at Scuola Sant'Anna in Italy, EPFL in Switzerland, and tested at the Rehabilitation Center 'Fondazione Don Carlo Gnocchi' in Florence. The device has sensors that can tell when a limb starts to buckle or flail, and lightweight motors which exert instant force on both legs to restore balance. Called the 'Active Pelvis Orthosis' or APO, it is attached to a belt worn around the middle that holds small motors at the hips, and soft braces strapped to the thighs. The APO could also help disabled people and amputees.
Transcript
00:00:05 We developed a closed-loop system based on the use of a wearable device, an exoskeleton, to detect the onset of falling, and to generate support to have balance recovery and to reduce the probability of falling. When I where the exoskeleton, I feel that I am helped and protected even during normal walking. The four main building blocks of our approach is first to design a light-weight exoskeleton, second to use it for the detection of the onset of falling, third to be able to generate support to increase the balance recovery in the subject, and four, maybe even more important than all the other three, is that this is a very easy-to-personalize approach. The subject comes, and after one to two minutes, we know what we can do for him or her.
00:01:03 Here is the exoskeleton on a subject.You can see the mechanical structure, you can see motors, you can see sensors inside the exoskeleton, and also on the body, you can see many, many markers to record the biomechanics of the movement while walking and while managing the perturbation. When the perturbation is delivered, it will detect this abnormal lack of balance and then will tell to the motors to control to push both thighs in order to reestablish balance as soon as possible. The novelty of this experiment is that for the first time, a human and an exoskeleton act together in real-time, and the exoskeleton gives support to mitigate a risk of fall.