🤦🏽‍♂️ Social media has given people a pretty distorted idea of what recreational hip #exoskeletons actually do. Traditional media often hasn’t done much better.

I’ve been using a hip exo for a few months. The simplest way to explain what it does:

It’s basically a leg-swing machine.

The exo's motor assists hip flexion during swing phase: helping bring your leg forward & up each time your foot is in the air.

It provides little or no hip extension assistance during stance, when your foot is on the ground.

I find the leg-swing assistance most helpful when walking fast, uphill, or upstairs.

Much less useful when walking slowly, downhill, or downstairs. I’ve also been surprised by how little it seems to help during jogging.

💡 One of the most interesting things I realized:

By focusing primarily on leg swing, the control problem is massively simplified.

I believe this is a major (and under-discussed) reason powered hip exos are proliferating faster than powered knee or ankle devices for recreational use: it’s simply an easier wearable robotics control problem.

☝🏽 A few other surprises:

1️⃣ It’s very quiet. If an exo makes enough noise to draw attention everywhere you go, people won’t want to wear it.

Quietness matters more for adoption than another few watts of power or Nm of torque. Exo developers still tend to think more power is better. It definitely is not with these hip exos.

2️⃣ It’s lousy for bending/squatting. Not only does it provide no assistance for these tasks, its frame physically gets in the way and causes discomfort or movement interference for me. This also means I can’t sit comfortably in most places while wearing it.

I knew this wasn’t the intended use case, beyond helping with the walking (while carrying) portion. But there are photos/videos online of these recreational hip exos during lifting & carrying tasks. Which is confusing. This device was even less compatible than I anticipated.

3️⃣ People don’t stare much. I expected considerably more attention in public.

4️⃣ Long pants work well. Aside from scraping against the metal rivets on my jean pockets. Shorts don’t work as well due to bunching and comfort issues, which is funny given how much marketing imagery involves outdoor & hiking use.

So what’s the verdict...

I’m convinced that most people will think recreational hip exos are neat for a few minutes but not something they'd use regularly or long-term.

Nonetheless, I think there are some valuable uses, potentially including certain older adults or others whose walking is limited by weakness/fatigue.

I’m also more convinced they’re often being marketed for the wrong things. The onus isn’t entirely on developers. Much of the nonsense comes from social media, influencers & even reputable media outlets.

Hip exos don’t need to be good at everything to be useful. We just need to get much better at identifying, and honestly communicating, what they’re actually good at.