A research lab at Northern Arizona University has published an open-source guide for building an exoskeleton that helps people with various medical conditions move their joints more freely.
It’s the first comprehensive guide of its kind made available online for free. It gives examples of elbow, hip, and ankle exoskeletons, but the designs, codes, and instructions can be extrapolated to essentially any joint in the human body.
Zach Lerner heads NAU’s Biomechantronics Lab.
"I’m hopeful that we’ll see more people adopting wearable robots to improve their lives, and maybe a lowering of the stigma from society around people of differing abilities," he says.
Lerner says creating exoskeletons requires specialized knowledge and extensive testing. He hopes the open-source data will lower those barriers and allow scientists to work more collaboratively.
The research was supported by private gifts through NAU Foundation and federal grants from the National Institutes of Health and the National Science Foundation.
