Fig. 1

Schematic representation of the experimental set-up. The exoskeleton (a) has footswitches in the heel to detect foot contact and a load cell that is mounted proximal to the pneumatic muscle to measure tension. A linear displacement sensor that is connected between the foot segment and the shank segment measures ankle joint angle for real-time control. During the experiment subjects wore an exoskeleton at each leg (b) and walked on a treadmill. The pneumatic muscles were activated during ankle push-off and assisted plantarflexion. Subjects wore EMG electrodes, reflective markers and a face mask for data collection. Not all reflective markers and EMG electrodes are represented in the figure