Wearable Leg Research Articles

Validating Adhesive-Free Bioimpedance of the Leg in Mid-Activity and Uncontrolled Settings.

Musculoskeletal health monitoring is limited in everyday settings where patient symptoms can substantially change - delaying treatment and worsening patient outcomes. Wearable technologies aim to quantify musculoskeletal health outside clinical settings but sensor constraints limit usability. Wearable localized multi-frequency bioimpedance assessment (MFBIA) shows promise for tracking musculoskeletal health but relies on gel electrodes, hindering extended at-home use. Here, we address this need for usable technologies for at-home musculoskeletal health assessment by designing a wearable adhesive-free MFBIA system using textile electrodes in extended uncontrolled mid-activity settings. An adhesive-free multimodal wearable leg MFBIA system was developed in-lab under realistic conditions (5 participants, 45 measurements). Mid-activity textile and gel electrode MFBIA was compared across multiple compound movements (10 participants). Accuracy in tracking long-term changes in leg MFBIA was assessed by correlating gel and textile MFBIA simultaneously recorded in uncontrolled settings (10 participants, 80+ measurement hours). Mid-activity MFBIA measurements with textile electrodes agreed highly with (ground truth) gel electrode measurements (average [Formula: see text], featuring <1-Ohm differences (0.618 ± 0.340 Ω) across all movements. Longitudinal MFBIA changes were successfully measured in extended at-home settings (repeated measures r = 0.84). Participant responses found the system to be comfortable and intuitive (8.3/10), and all participants were able to don and operate the system independently. This work demonstrates wearable textile electrodes can be a viable substitute for gel electrodes when monitoring leg MFBIA in dynamic, uncontrolled settings. Adhesive-free MFBIA can improve healthcare by enabling robust wearable musculoskeletal health monitoring in at-home and everyday settings.

A Fully Self-Powered Wearable Leg Movement Sensing System for Human Health Monitoring.

Energy-autonomous wearable human activity monitoring is imperative for daily healthcare, benefiting from long-term sustainable uses. Herein, a fully self-powered wearable system, enabling real-time monitoring and assessments of human multimodal health parameters including knee joint movement, metabolic energy, locomotion speed, and skin temperature, which are fully self-powered by highly-efficient flexible thermoelectric generators (f-TEGs) is proposed and developed. The wearable system is composed of f-TEGs, fabric strain sensors, ultra-low-power edge computing, and Bluetooth. The f-TEGs worn on the leg not only harvest energy from body heat and supply power sustainably for the whole monitoring system, but also serve as zero-power motion sensors to detect limb movement and skin temperature. The fabric strain sensor made by printing PEDOT: PSS on pre-stretched nylon fiber-wrapped rubber band enables high-fidelity and ultralow-power measurements on highly-dynamic knee movements. Edge computing is elaborately designed to estimate multimodal health parameters including time-varying metabolic energy in real-time, which are wirelessly transmitted via Bluetooth. The whole monitoring system is operated automatically and intelligently, works sustainably in both static and dynamic states, and is fully self-powered by the f-TEGs.

Wearable Leg Movement Monitoring System for High-Precision Real-Time Metabolic Energy Estimation and Motion Recognition

Comprehensive and quantitative assessment of human physical activity in daily life is valuable for healthcare, especially for those who suffer from obesity and neurological disorders or are at high risk of dementia. Common wearable devices, e.g., smartwatches, are insufficient and inaccurate for monitoring highly dynamic limb movements and assessing human motion. Here, we report a new wearable leg movement monitoring system incorporating a custom-made motion sensor with machine learning algorithm to perceive human motion accurately and comprehensively during diverse walking and running actions. The system enables real-time multimodal perceptions of personal identity, motion state, locomotion speed, and energy expenditure for wearers. A general law of extracting real-time metabolic energy from leg movements is verified although individual gaits show differences. In addition, we propose a novel sensing configuration combining unilateral lower leg movement velocity with its angular rate to achieve high accuracy and good generalizability while simplifying the wearable system. Advanced performances in personal identification (accuracy of 98.7%) and motion-state recognition (accuracy of 93.7%) are demonstrated. The wearable system also exhibites high-precision real-time estimations of locomotion speed (error of 3.04% to 9.68%) and metabolic energy (error of 4.18% to 14.71%) for new subjects across various time-varying conditions. The wearable system allows reliable leg movement monitoring and quantitative assessment of bodily kinematic and kinetic behaviors during daily activities, as well as safe identity authentication by gait parameters, which would greatly facilitate smart life, personal healthcare, and rehabilitation training.

Combined manual control and automatic standing stabilization for wearable leg support system

Combined manual control and automatic standing stabilization for wearable leg support system

Wearable leg support system with bilateral control (Presentation of sole feeling by bilateral control)

Wearable leg support system with bilateral control (Presentation of sole feeling by bilateral control)

Development of wearable IoT-based front kicking's angle monitoring device

Kicking prowess is subjected to flexibility of leg. The coach is able to improve the athlete’s kicking competency if the leg flexibility is known. In this paper, a wearable leg flexibility-monitoring device using flex sensor and Internet of Things (IoT) platform has been successfully developed and tested. The Arduino NodeMCU microcontroller will process and convert the input received from the flex sensor and transmit the real time kicking angle and corresponding resistance data to the two main outputs; the ThingSpeak IoT platform and the LCD display for real monitoring. Thirty participants were recruited from two different backgrounds; silat athletes (n=20) and normal participants (n=10). The participants were distributed into six weight categories; (50-55 kg), (55-60 kg), (60-65 kg), (65-70 kg), (70-75 kg) and (75-80 kg). Based on the average angle measured from three trials, it can be observed that different participant presents different average and standard deviation of leg flexibility independently of weight category. Moreover, the background factor of the subjects involved did not greatly contribute in this research as the participant from normal background has the highest mean leg flexibility (73.89 ± 17.41°). This situation is probably due to no standard of kicking styles that had been set for all participants at the beginning of the experiment. Nonetheless, one conclusive remark that can be deduced from the findings is the flexibility of an individual is greatly influenced by body weight since (75-80 kg) weight category has achieved the lowest mean angle of kicking for both backgrounds; normal (14.00± 1.33°) and silat athlete (23.89± 6.44°) subjects. In the future, additional sensors such as accelerometer can be used to predict the stability of the body for better evaluation of leg flexibility.

Manual Control and Automatic Standing Stabilization Control on Wearable Leg Support System for Lower Limbs Disabled (Verification Focused on Ankle and Hip Joint by Test System)

Manual Control and Automatic Standing Stabilization Control on Wearable Leg Support System for Lower Limbs Disabled (Verification Focused on Ankle and Hip Joint by Test System)

Combined Manual and Automatic Control for Wearable Leg Support System

Combined Manual and Automatic Control for Wearable Leg Support System

Wearable leg support system with bilateral control

Wearable leg support system with bilateral control

Wearable leg support system with bilateral control

Wearable leg support system with bilateral control

Wearable leg support system for Lower-Limb hemiplegia

Wearable leg support system for Lower-Limb hemiplegia

片麻痺者のための手動制御脚支援システムManipulegの開発

A wearable leg support system for hemiplegia has been proposed in this paper. Power assist suits, which are studied by many researchers lately, are not applicable to those people with lower limb paralysis caused by spinal cord injury or stroke. We have developed a wearable leg support system, Manipuleg-2, that has actuators at hip, knee, and ankle, and has a special control lever mounted on the unaffected shoulder. The postures of user's arm and wrist are detected by the lever with 3 DOF, and are transformed to the actuator joint angles for manipulation of the exoskeleton leg. Walking experiments have been conducted for an able-bodied subject with the developed system on a level floor and a certain uneven floor, and the results show that the subject has mastered how to manipulate the control lever to walk properly.

立位外科手術時の負担を軽減する装着型術者下肢支持装置の開発

立位外科手術時の負担を軽減する装着型術者下肢支持装置の開発

装着型脚支援システムの開発

装着型脚支援システムの開発

509 装着型脚支援システムの開発 : 足裏感覚の有無の影響(OS5-(3),OS5 オーガナイズドセッション≪ライフサポートにおける工学技術≫)

509 装着型脚支援システムの開発 : 足裏感覚の有無の影響(OS5-(3),OS5 オーガナイズドセッション≪ライフサポートにおける工学技術≫)

513 マニュアル制御に基づく装着型脚支援システムに関する研究(OS5-(3),OS5 オーガナイズドセッション《ライフサポートにおける工学技術》)

513 マニュアル制御に基づく装着型脚支援システムに関する研究(OS5-(3),OS5 オーガナイズドセッション《ライフサポートにおける工学技術》)

510 装着型脚支援システム : 新しい操作デバイスの開発(OS5 オーガナイズドセッション《ライフサポートにおける工学技術》)

We had developed a wearable leg support system, Manipuleg-2, that the wearer can control his or her paralyzed leg via a control lever attached at his or her shoulder. In this paper, we have proposed a novel method of controlling the leg support system, that does not use levers, but uses a camera to detect the wearer's command. We have shown that the leg support system could be driven by operating the control grip.

2033 立位安定化試験システムの開発(G05-5 生体生理の運動・計測と制御,G05 機械力学部門)

We have developed a test bench for the stability enhancement system of standing position(SESSP) For those who have paralysis m both lower extremities, we would like to develop the wearable leg support system m which the joint actuators are manually controlled by control levers Since there are no sensations m the paralyzed limbs, we suppose that it is difficult to stabilize the body only by manual control, so that a certain stabilizing controller would be required To realize the stability enhancement system of standing position, we have developed a test bench to conduct stabilizing experiments by able-bodied persons

Exoskeleton Device for Rehabilitation of Stroke Patients Using SEMG during Isometric Contraction

Robots are becoming more interactive and assisting to human beings day by day. They are serving humanity in the fields of industry, defense and medicine. Exoskeletons are also devices that reside in category of wearable robotics. An exoskeleton is an external structural mechanism with joints and links corresponding to those of the human body. With applications in rehabilitation medicine and virtual reality simulation, exoskeletons offer benefits for both disabled and healthy populations. Exoskeletons can be used as a capability magnifier or assisting device. This paper presents a proposed design for smart active exoskeleton for lower limbs. This proposed exoskeleton design not only assist a person but also tries to improve its GAIT. The twin wearable legs are powered by Actuators, all controlled by a microprocessor. The simulation results of the control mechanism shows its smart capabilities. In addition, the processor based control produces a more natural muscle like activity and as such can be considered a soft and bio-mimetic actuation system. This capacity to “replicate” the function of natural muscle and inherent safety is extremely important when working in close proximity to humans. The integration of the components sections and testing of the performance will also be considered to show how the structure and actuators can be combined to produce the various systems needed for a highly flexible/low weight clinically viable rehabilitation exoskeleton.

505 マニュアル制御に基づく装着型脚支援システム : Manipuleg-2の開発(OS5-(7)オーガナイズドセッション《ライフサポートにおける工学技術》)

505 マニュアル制御に基づく装着型脚支援システム : Manipuleg-2の開発(OS5-(7)オーガナイズドセッション《ライフサポートにおける工学技術》)