Hip Flexion Exosuit

2023-2026

A cable driven suit that help prevent freezing of gait in Parkinson’s patients. By providing hip flexion assistance at certain times in the person’s gait freezing could be prevented altogether.

How does the suit work?

The suit provides assistance with Hip Flexion. The acutator pods that sit on the front o the hips have a motor that coils and uncoils the rope. This is timed to a person’s gait and they way they walk, providing assitance lifting their leg.

Issues facing the project

The length of the actuator rope is the limiting factor in how much force the suit can deliver, and how heavy a leg it can lift

The actuator rope length is being limited by femur length. Heavy but short individuals were unable to have success using the suit, despite their freezing of gait and parkinson’s disease being very similar to others who had had a positive reaction to the suit.

Previous solutions to this issue involved moving the thigh wraps down the leg closer to the knee, or moving the waistbelt up. However these solutions move these parts further from the optimal biomechanical placement.

Implementation

The researcher places the belt and thigh wraps on the patient and measures the actuator rope length.

If this length is not long enough to achieve optimal force, based on the patient’s weight, the researcher will unpin the load cell and move it to the lower slot to increase the rope length.

Improvement

I added another anchor point to the thigh wrap. The load cell has a pin that lets it click into whichever level the patient needs.

This lower anchor point allows the rope length to increase by 1.75” without moving the thigh wrap or the waistbelt.

The suit can now deliver more force. This allows it to be used by shorter and heavier individuals

Implementation

The researcher places the belt and thigh wraps on the patient and measures the actuator rope length.

If this length is not long enough to achieve optimal force, based on the patient’s weight, the researcher will unpin the load cell and move it to the lower slot to increase the rope length.