Event
XoNav Hip Exoskeleton Enables Haptic Navigation Cues
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Debadrata Sarkar and other researchers propose XoNav, a four-actuator hip exoskeleton that applies navigation instructions directly to the hip joints in haptic form: sagittal-plane actuators render forward-motion and two-level braking cues, while coronal-plane actuators render two-level turning cues. Thigh-mounted IMUs on both legs combined with an LSTM gait-state classifier synchronize the cues with the wearer's gait and suppress cues while standing; the classifier achieved 95.9-97.9% recall on unseen users, and the average detection delays for stance-to-swing and swing-to-stance transitions were 38.6 ms and 63.1 ms, respectively; the strongest braking cue intensity remained below 53% of the safety limit. In blindfolded Wizard-of-Oz navigation trials along three routes, participants kept 98.8% of their walking distance within a 0.75 m wide corridor. The researchers also conducted a feasibility study of autonomous navigation and avoidance of unmapped obstacles using a body-worn camera, RTAB-Map, and Nav2.
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- XoNav: Using a Hip Exoskeleton as a Personalized Haptic Interface for Assisted Navigation
XoNav is a four-actuator hip exoskeleton that renders navigation commands directly as haptic cues at the hip joints, using sagittal-plane actuators to render an Advance cue and two-level Braking cues, and frontal-plane actuators to render two-level Steering cues. A bilateral thigh-mounted IMU setup combined with an LSTM gait-state classifier synchronizes cues with the wearer's gait and suppresses them while standing; the classifier achieved 95.2-97.9% recall on unseen users, with mean detection delays of 38.6 ms and 63.1 ms for stance-to-swing and swing-to-stance transitions, respectively.
arXiv cs.RO ·