How do Passive Exoskeletons influence Human Balance Control in in simulated Real-World environments?

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Despite significant advancements in technology, research regarding exoskeletons has been hindered due to an inability to study their effectiveness in real-world conditions and hazards that affect balance, balance recovery, and promote unstable movement. Such scenarios include vibrations experienced whilst standing on moving public transport or walking on uneven/unsteady terrain. Current studies have used standing balance tasks and unexpected jolts or slip-like perturbations whilst a participant walks on a treadmill in a laboratory, as they provide an established model for testing. However, these conditions are not ecologically valid. The VSimulator, an EPSRC funded project (EP/P020690/1), offers advances in this area by replicating real-world conditions. The VSimulator is a 3.7m by 3.7m force plate array on a motion platform with six degrees of freedom of movement that enables unconstrained movement and underfoot perturbations with which balance and balance recovery can be tested (vsimulators.co.uk). The system includes motion capture technology, immersive virtual reality, enabling better investigation of the changes in the body's response to perturbation under ecologically valid environments. Therefore, this project will also aim to investigate human neuromuscular adaptations to wearing an ankle exoskeleton during balance experiments performed with the ecologically realistic VSimulator platform perturbations, and in immersive virtual reality scenarios