By Ian Thomsen
Fatima Tourk wears one thick velcro belt around her waist and another around her right upper leg as she walks the whirring treadmill at a relaxed, comfortable speed.
But the exercise is even easier than it appears. For Tourk is receiving a boost to her right hip from a battery-powered exoskeleton that she has helped create.
“It feels pretty natural,” says Tourk, a Northeastern University Ph.D. candidate in mechanical engineering. “You can definitely feel it lifting your leg up a little bit. I would say it’s pretty comfortable to walk.”
Tourk is among the graduate students assisting in the development of exoskeletons at Northeastern’s Shepherd Lab, where professor Max Shepherd leads efforts to design controllers for wearable robotics.
“The long-term vision is to have what we call ‘partial-assist exoskeletons’ that provide an assistive force to the body to help make it easier to walk,” says Shepherd, an assistant professor of physical therapy, human movement and rehabilitation sciences whose lab work is funded by a National Science Foundation grant. “This would be most beneficial for patients who have different mobility challenges. You can imagine kids with cerebral palsy or people who have had a stroke could put on this device. They could walk more efficiently, faster and more symmetrically, maybe with a lower hazard of tripping and falling.”
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