Fig. 1

Overview of exosuit hardware and exosuit-generated assistance profile. (A) Components of a unilateral soft wearable robot (exosuit) designed to augment paretic ankle function during poststroke walking. The exosuit utilizes garment-like functional textile anchors and Bowden cables to generate assistive joint torques. Inertial measurement units (IMUs)attached to the shoe are used for online detection of gait events and system control. The system itself weighs 3.2 kg, with the different sizes of garments between 3.8 and 4.1 kg or between 3.6–8.9% (mean: 5.7%) of the subject’s body mass. Less than 14% of this mass was worn distally. (B) Study participant wearing the portable soft exosuit in the motion capture lab. (C) Example average exosuit forces from one participant. The exosuit generates plantarflexion (PF, blue) and dorsiflexion (DF, green) forces that are designed to restore the paretic limb’s contribution to forward propulsion during push-off and ground clearance, respectively