The History and Future of the WalkON Suit: A Powered Exoskeleton for People With Disabilities

Abstract

In this article, the mechanical design concept, control strategy, and gait-trajectory-generation method are introduced for a powered exoskeleton, called the <italic xmlns:mml="http://www.w3.org/1998/Math/MathML" xmlns:xlink="http://www.w3.org/1999/xlink">WalkON Suit</i> , which won the gold and bronze medals at Cybathlon 2020. The WalkON Suit was developed based on several distinct technologies, such as high-power actuation modules, robotic legs with parallel-elastic-actuation modules, gait-pattern generation, and the iterative-learning algorithm of human behavior, which made it powerful and unique.