With the recent progress in personal care robots, interest in wearable exoskeletons has been increasing.
Hemiparesis is a medical condition where one side of the body is weak because of which the human faces motor disabilities. Despite having both the legs, a hemiparetic patient cannot walk properly. According to a government report from 2016, more than 54 lakh people suffer from motor disabilities in India. The main focus of researches to treat such a medical condition has been on active exoskeletons that are powered and use electrical/chemical actuators and bionic sensors to achieve the corrective output of natural human gait for a hemiparetic patient. But the average price of such active exoskeletons is around INR 20 Lakhs, which a large part of our affected population is unable to afford.
The main focus of this research has been on developing a passive exoskeleton, which is completely mechanical and eliminates the use of bionic sensors and electrical/chemical actuators, and thus has a very low cost. This has also made the design inherently safe.
For presenting this prototype, we were awarded at IIT Delhi in March 2019.
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