PROJECT SYNOPSIS
With aging, many biological processes influencing the musculoskeletal system strongly affect peoples’ strength and endurance capacities, as well as abilities in coordination, stability, and balance. Therefore, gait disorders and lower-limb impairments are common and often devastating companions of aging, limiting people’s independence in daily activities. Although the relationship between age and physiological and physical functions is very complex, it has been widely shown that physical abilities are generally superior in physically active people. Inspired by the concept of “prehabilitation”, this project aims to promote active lifestyles based on regular moderate-intensity physical training that could help elderly people limit the gradual decay of physical functions due to aging, through lightweight and portable wearable robots. More specifically, this project aims to design and validate completely novel paradigms of enhanced gait training programs based on robotic exoskeletons with high-fidelity impedance performance, that could provide adaptive training programs in functional tasks. This project opens new chances to apply wearable robots in the field of “active aging”, which represents a new application domain for wearable robots, traditionally investigated in other fields, e.g., rehabilitation, assistance, and occupational sectors.
With aging, many biological processes influencing the musculoskeletal system strongly affect peoples’ strength and endurance capacities, as well as abilities in coordination, stability, and balance. Therefore, gait disorders and lower-limb impairments are common and often devastating companions of aging, limiting people’s independence in daily activities. Although the relationship between age and physiological and physical functions is very complex, it has been widely shown that physical abilities are generally superior in physically active people. Inspired by the concept of “prehabilitation”, this project aims to promote active lifestyles based on regular moderate-intensity physical training that could help elderly people limit the gradual decay of physical functions due to aging, through lightweight and portable wearable robots. More specifically, this project aims to design and validate completely novel paradigms of enhanced gait training programs based on robotic exoskeletons with high-fidelity impedance performance, that could provide adaptive training programs in functional tasks. This project opens new chances to apply wearable robots in the field of “active aging”, which represents a new application domain for wearable robots, traditionally investigated in other fields, e.g., rehabilitation, assistance, and occupational sectors.