Simulating Ideal Assistive Strategies to Reduce the Metabolic Cost of Walking in the Elderly

Development of walking assist exoskeletons is a growing area of study, offering a solution to restore, maintain, and enhance mobility. However, applying this technology to the elderly is challenging and there is currently no consensus as to the optimal strategy for assisting elderly gait. The gait patterns of elderly individuals often differ from those of the younger population, primarily in the ankle and hip joints. This study used musculoskeletal simulations to predict how ankle and hip actuators might affect the energy expended by elderly participants during gait.

OpenSim was used to generate simulations of 10 elderly participants walking at self-selected slow, comfortable, and fast speeds. Ideal flexion/extension assistive actuators were added bilaterally to the ankle or hip joints of the models to predict the maximum metabolic power that could be saved by exoskeletons that apply torques at these joints.

Compared to the unassisted scenario, the use of ideal hip actuators resulted in 21±5%, 26±5%, and 30±6% reductions in average metabolic power consumption at slow, comfortable, and fast walking speeds, respectively; use of ideal ankle actuators resulted in 12±3%, 14±2%, and 16±1% metabolic savings, respectively.

The simulations suggest that providing hip assistance to elderly individuals during walking can result in significantly greater metabolic savings than ankle assistance, assuming kinematics and total joint moments do not change substantially with assistance.

The achieved research results and analysis provide exoskeleton developers guidance on optimally designing walking assist exoskeletons, thus promoting consensus toward the optimal strategy for assisting elderly individuals.