Abstract
The science and technology of wearable robots are steadily advancing, and the use of such robots in our everyday life appears to be within reach. Nevertheless, widespread adoption of wearable robots should not be taken for granted, especially since many recent attempts to bring them to real-life applications resulted in mixed outcomes. The aim of this article is to address the current challenges that are limiting the application and wider adoption of wearable robots that are typically worn over the human body. We categorized the challenges into mechanical layout, actuation, sensing, body interface, control, human–robot interfacing and coadaptation, and benchmarking. For each category, we discuss specific challenges and the rationale for why solving them is important, followed by an overview of relevant recent works. We conclude with an opinion that summarizes possible solutions that could contribute to the wider adoption of wearable robots.
| Original language | English |
|---|---|
| Article number | e14 |
| Journal | Wearable Technologies |
| Volume | 2 |
| DOIs | |
| Publication status | Published - 11 Nov 2021 |
Bibliographical note
Funding Information:Barkan Ugurlu received the PhD degree in Electrical and Computer Engineering from Yokohama National University, Yokohama, Japan, in 2010, with the Monbukagakusho scholarship granted by the Ministry of Education, Culture, Sports, and Technology of Japan. From May 2010 to March 2013, he was a postdoctoral researcher, with the Istituto Italiano di Tecnologia, Genova, Italy, and Toyota Technological Institute, Nagoya, Japan. Between March 2013 and February 2015, he was a Research Scientist with the Computational Neuroscience Laboratories, Advanced Telecommunications Research Institute International (ATR), Kyoto, Japan. He currently holds an Assistant Professor position with the Department of Mechanical Engineering, Ozyegin University, Istanbul, Turkey. His research interests include biological sensorimotor control and motor recovery, active orthoses and exoskeletons, robot-aided rehabilitation, humanoid/quadruped locomotion control, and multibody dynamics, force, and compliance control.
Funding Information:
J.B. was partially supported by the Slovenian Research Agency Programme P2-0076. M.L. was supported by the Istituto Italiano per l’Assicurazione contro gli Infortuni sul Lavoro (INAIL) under grant agreement nos. PR19-RR-P1 and PR19-RR-P2. T.V. was supported as a postdoctoral fellow of the Research Foundation Flanders—Fonds voor Wetenschappelijk Onderzoek (FWO). D.N. was partially supported by the United States National Science Foundation under grant no. 1933409. B.U. was partially supported by the Scientific and Technological Research Council of Turkey (TUBITAK) under grant no. 215E138. D.T. was partially supported by EUROBENCH under grant agreement no. 779963.
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