Many people suffer from limited mobility due to aging or diseases. Lower limb exoskeletons seem to be solution to overcome part of these limitations. With the help of the Athene Young Investigator funding an existing exoskeleton simulator, which is used to manipulate human movement, should be improved and used to investigate hardware and control solutions to assist walking gait. Each actuation unit of the simulator consists of a motor, a pulley and a bowden cable that is attached to the human by a hip human-machine interface. Each actuation unit can manipulate one degree of freedom in one direction and is placed offboard behind the treadmill. It is planned to investigate on online optimization techniques for walking assistance. First evaluations should be performed with healthy young subjects.

A publication introducing the first generation simulator:

• Schumacher, C., Grimmer, M., Scherf, A., Zhao, G., Beckerle, P., and Seyfarth, A. A movement manipulator to introduce temporary and local perturbations in human hopping. 7th IEEE International Conference on Biomedical Robotics and Biomechatronics (Biorob), Enschede, The Netherlands, August 26-29, 2018.

Ph.D. Martin Grimmer, Ph.D. Guoping Zhao