Engineers from the University of Utah have developed a powered exoskeleton to help amputees move around with less effort, reported 2 KUTV. The machine was made at the University of Utah's Bionic Engineering Lab.
The new experimental machine has already been tested by at least six lower-limb amputees. 74-year-old Salt Lake City amputee Stan Schaar said, "It just felt like a big wind was behind me, pushing me down the road."
So how does it work?
The machine wraps around the waist and leg of the person wearing it. It then uses battery-powered electric motors and embedded microprocessors that enable an amputee to walk around with ease.
Typical prosthetics cannot exactly replicate the work that a human leg does, causing amputees to end up "overexerting their residual-limb and intact-limb muscles to compensate for the lack of energy from the prosthesis."
Graduate students Marshall K. Ishmael and Dane A. Archangeli are working on the project along with assistant professor Tommaso Lenzi. Archangeli said, "The exoskeleton's AI understands how the person moves and assists how the person moves."
Lenzi said, "It's equivalent to taking off a 26-pound backpack. That is a really big improvement. We're very close to what an average person would expend at the same speed. The metabolic consumption is almost indistinguishable from that of an able-bodied person, depending on the fitness level."