Wearable Robotic Exoskeletons for Overground Walking in Rehabilitation: Specific Contexts of Use and Improvement Opportunities

Abstract

Within the clinical rehabilitation settings, wearable robotic exoskeletons (WREs) can be used as a dynamic walking orthosis, for a neurorehabilitation intervention, as well as a for physical activity adaptation. The purpose of this commentary is to describe and comment on these issues. There are important links between the use of WRE for clinical setting intervention and the technical aspect, which are related to define a specific walking speed and designing a dynamic stable user-WRE couple. There is still difficulty to allow the user to choose the walking speed so that the WRE adapts to it. Moreover, the stability of walking with the WRE without using a walker or crutches is still challenging problem. The enhancement of these two technical aspects (i.e., walking speed and dynamic stability) will help in the future to design exoskeleton with increased functionalities such as walking along a curved path and making turns, walking over uneven or rough terrains (e.g., slopes), and ascending and descending stairs.