Figure 3
From: Simulation-based biomechanical assessment of unpowered exoskeletons for running
Joints’ torques. This figure shows the effects of exoskeleton augmentation on the joints’ biological moments and their average over the whole stride. The start of the gait cycle is at the heel-strike instant of the right leg, and all of the figures are for the right leg. The swing phase is shown with a dashed line over the horizontal axes. (a) is the exoskeleton torque profile for different stiffness coefficients. (b–d) show the biological knee, hip, and ankle moments. As it is clear, the exoskeleton augmentation only affects the biological hip moment, and the moments of the knee and ankle are not changed; thus, we have not plotted the average torque of the knee and ankle joints. The background color code for (c) is: light and dark gray mean biological hip moment improvement and disruption/increment, respectively. Moreover, the minimum of the average biological hip moment is on \(\alpha =1\) where it has \(31\%\) reduction compared to no exoskeleton case. And, the reduction of the average biological hip moment for \(\alpha ^*=0.6\) is \(26\%\). N \(=7\); bars, mean; error bars, s.e.m; P values, ANOVA (random effect: participant; fixed effects: spring coefficient; significance level \(=0.05\)).
