Light-Weight Wearable Gyroscopic Actuators Can Modulate Balance Performance and Gait Characteristics: A Proof-of-Concept Study

Falling is a major cause of morbidity, and is often caused by a decrease in postural stability. A key component of postural stability is whole-body centroidal angular momentum, which can be influenced by control moment gyroscopes. In this proof-of-concept study, we explore the influence of our wearable robotic gyroscopic actuator “GyroPack” on...

Wearable airbag technology and machine learned models to mitigate falls after stroke

Background: Falls are a common complication experienced after a stroke and can cause serious detriments to physical health and social mobility, necessitating a dire need for intervention. Among recent advancements, wearable airbag technology has been designed to detect and mitigate fall impact. However, these devices have not been designed...

Assisting gait with free moments or joint moments on the swing leg

Wearable actuators in lower-extremity active orthoses or prostheses have the potential to address a variety of gait disorders. However, whenever conventional joint actuators exert moments on specific limbs, they must simultaneously impose opposing reaction moments on other limbs, which may reduce the desired effects and perturb posture. Momentum...

Augmenting Clinical Outcome Measures of Gait and Balance with a Single Inertial Sensor in Age-Ranged Healthy Adults

Gait and balance impairments are linked with reduced mobility and increased risk of falling. Wearable sensing technologies, such as inertial measurement units (IMUs), may augment clinical assessments by providing continuous, high-resolution data. This study tested and validated the utility of a single IMU to quantify gait and balance features...

Directional singularity-robust torque control for gyroscopic actuators

Gyroscopic actuation is appealing for wearable applications due to its ability to impart free moments on a body without exoskeletal structures on the joints.We recently proposed an unobtrusive balancing aid consisting of multiple parallelmounted control moment gyroscopes (CMGs) contained within a backpack-like orthopedic corset. Using...

Observing the state of balance with a single upper-body sensor

The occurrence of falls is an urgent challenge in our aging society. For wearable devices that actively prevent falls or mitigate their consequences, a critical prerequisite is knowledge on the user’s current state of balance. To keep such wearable systems practical and to achieve high acceptance, only very limited sensor instrumentation is...