Fig. 5: Efficacy study with older adults.

a, Older participants completed a 400 m walk on a flat athletic track at their preferred speed unassisted (grey) or while using WalkON (navy). Credit: Geobasis-DE/BKG (2009) (right panel). b, Using WalkON significantly reduced the metabolic cost of transport (***P < 0.001, linear mixed-effects model). c, The linear velocity of walking was unaltered on average across participants. d–f, WalkON allowed for unrestricted hip motion, as visible from the raw hip phase portraits in (d), the hip range of motion (ROM) in (e) and the hip peak velocities in stance and swing in (f). g, Older adults reported strong perceived sense of control over voluntary movements while using WalkON (***P < 0.001, two-tailed one-sample t-test). The results for individual participants are shown as dot plots. The bar plots are presented as mean ± s.e.m, whereas time-series are presented as mean ± s.d. (shaded area). In box plots, bounds of boxes represent the lower (25th percentile) and upper (75th percentile) quartiles. In c, the black horizontal line is the median and the orange circle the mean; in g the white circle is the median.