Harvard's soft exosuit makes walking 23 percent easier

Harvard Wyss Institute researchers have been working on a soft exosuit with DARPA's financial help for years. While they were able to present a proof of concept in 2016, it's only now that they've found out just how much the suit can actually help its wearer. According to a new study published in Science Robotics, Harvard's exosuit reduces the energy a user needs to exert while walking by 23 percent. It does that by providing assistive force to the ankle at the perfect moment when you take another step. Team leader Conor Walsh said that's the highest percentage of reduction in energy use observed with an exosuit: "In a test group of seven healthy wearers, we clearly saw that the more assistance provided to the ankle joints, the more energy the wearers could save with a maximum reduction of almost 23% compared to walking with the exosuit powered-off. To our knowledge, this is the highest relative reduction in energy expenditure observed to date with a tethered exoskeleton or exosuit."