Movement scientists have proposed to ground the relation between prosody and gesture in ‘vocal-entangled gestures’, defined as biomechanical linkages between upper limb movement and the respiratory–vocal system. Focusing on spoken language negation, this article identifies an acoustic profile with which gesture is plausibly entangled, specifically linking the articulatory behaviour of onset consonant lengthening with forelimb gesture preparation and facial deformation. This phenomenon was discovered in a video corpus of accented negative utterances from English-language televised dialogues. Eight target examples were selected and examined using visualization software to analyse the correspondence of gesture phase structures (preparation, stroke, holds) with the negation word’s acoustic signal (duration, pitch and intensity). The results show that as syllable–onset consonant lengthens (voiced alveolar /n/ = 300 ms on average) with pitch and intensity increasing (e.g. ‘NNNNNNEVER’), the speaker’s humerus is rotating with palm pronating/adducing while his or her face is distorting. Different facial distortions, furthermore, were found to be entangled with different post-onset phonetic profiles (e.g. vowel rounding). These findings illustrate whole-bodily dynamics and multiscalarity as key theoretical proposals within ecological and enactive approaches to language. Bringing multimodal and entangled treatments of utterances into conversation has important implications for gesture studies.

Low-back pain is a common occupational hazard for industrial workers. Several studies show the advantages of using rigid and soft back-support passive exoskeletons and exosuits (exos) to reduce the low-back loading and risk of injury. However, benefits of using these exos have been shown to be task-specific. Therefore, in this study, we developed a benchmarking approach to assess exos for an industrial workplace at Hankamp Gears B.V. We assessed two rigid (Laevo Flex, Paexo back) and two soft (Auxivo Liftsuit 1.0, and Darwing Hakobelude) exos for tasks resembling the workplace. We measured the assistive moment provided by each exo and their respective influence on muscle activity as well as the user’s perception of comfort and exertion. Ten participants performed four lifting tasks (Static hold, Asymmetric, Squat, and Stoop), while their electromyography and subjective measures were collected. The two rigid exos provided the largest assistance during the Dynamic tasks. Reductions in erector spinae activity were seen to be task-specific, with larger reductions for the two rigid exos. Overall, Laevo Flex offered a good balance between assistive moments, reductions in muscle activity, as well as user comfort and reductions in perceived exertion. Thus, we recommend benchmarking exos for intended use in the industrial workplace. This will hopefully result in a better adoption of the back-support exoskeletons in the workplace and help reduce low-back pain.

Orthotic wrist supports will be beneficial for people with muscular weakness to keep their hand in a neutral rest position and prevent potential wrist contractures. Compensating the weight of the hands is complex since the level of support depends on both wrist and forearm orientations. To explore simplified approaches, two different weight compensation strategies (constant and linear) were compared to the theoretical ideal sinusoidal profile and no compensation in eight healthy subjects using a mechanical wrist support system. All three compensation strategies showed a significant reduction of 47–53% surface electromyography activity in the anti-gravity m. extensor carpi radialis. However, for the higher palmar flexion region, a significant increase of 44–61% in the m. flexor carpi radialis was found for all compensation strategies. No significant differences were observed between the various compensation strategies. Two conclusions can be drawn: (1) a simplified torque profile (e.g., constant or linear) for weight compensation can be considered as equally effective as the theoretically ideal sinusoidal profile and (2) even the theoretically ideal profile provides no perfect support as other factors than weight, such as passive joint impedance, most likely influence the required compensation torque for the wrist joint.

The ability to accurately identify human gait intent is a challenge relevant to the success of many applications in robotics, including, but not limited to, assistive devices. Most existing intent identification approaches, however, are either sensor-specific or use a pattern-recognition approach that requires large amounts of training data. This paper introduces a real-time walking speed intent identification algorithm based on the Mahalanobis distance that requires minimal training data. This data efficiency is enabled by making the simplifying assumption that each time step of walking data is independent of all other time steps. The accuracy of the algorithm was analyzed through human-subject experiments that were conducted using controlled walking speed changes on a treadmill. Experimental results confirm that the model used for intent identification converges quickly (within 5 min of training data). On average, the algorithm successfully detected the change in desired walking speed within one gait cycle and had a maximum of 87% accuracy at responding with the correct intent category of speed up, slow down, or no change. The findings also show that the accuracy of the algorithm improves with the magnitude of the speed change, while speed increases were more easily detected than speed decreases.

Passive ankle-foot prostheses are light-weighted and reliable, but they cannot generate net positive power, which is essential in restoring the natural gait pattern of amputees. Recent robotic prostheses addressed the problem by actively controlling the storage and release of energy generated during the stance phase through the mechanical deformation of elastic elements housed in the device. This study proposes an innovative low-power active prosthetic module that fits on off-the-shelf passive ankle-foot energy-storage-and-release (ESAR) prostheses. The module is placed parallel to the ESAR foot, actively augmenting the energy stored in the foot and controlling the energy return for an enhanced push-off. The parallel elastic actuation takes advantage of the amputee’s natural loading action on the foot’s elastic structure, retaining its deformation. The actuation unit is designed to additionally deform the foot and command the return of the total stored energy. The control strategy of the prosthesis adapts to changes in the user’s cadence and loading conditions to return the energy at a desired stride phase. An early verification on two transtibial amputees during treadmill walking showed that the proposed mechanism could increase the subjects’ dorsiflexion peak of 15.2% and 41.6% for subjects 1 and 2, respectively, and the cadence of about 2%. Moreover, an increase of 26% and 45% was observed in the energy return for subjects 1 and 2, respectively.

The biological ankle dorsiflexes several degrees during swing to provide adequate clearance between the foot and ground, but conventional energy storage and return (ESR) prosthetic feet remain in their neutral position, increasing the risk of toe scuffs and tripping. We present a new prosthetic ankle intended to reduce fall risk by dorsiflexing the ankle joint during swing, thereby increasing the minimum clearance between the foot and ground. Unlike previous approaches to providing swing dorsiflexion such as powered ankles or hydraulic systems with dissipative yielding in stance, our ankle device features a spring-loaded linkage that adopts a neutral angle during stance, allowing ESR, but adopts a dorsiflexed angle during swing. The ankle unit was designed, fabricated, and assessed in level ground walking trials on a unilateral transtibial prosthesis user to experimentally validate its stance and swing phase behaviors. The assessment consisted of three conditions: the ankle in an operational configuration, the ankle in a locked configuration (unable to dorsiflex), and the subject’s daily use ESR prosthesis. When the ankle was operational, minimum foot clearance (MFC) increased by 13 mm relative to the locked configuration and 15 mm relative to his daily use prosthesis. Stance phase energy return was not significantly impacted in the operational configuration. The increase in MFC provided by the passive dorsiflexing ankle prosthesis may be sufficient to decrease the rate of falls experienced by prosthesis users in the real world.

Current laboratory-based setups (optical marker cameras + force plates) for human motion measurement require participants to stay in a constrained capture region which forbids rich movement types. This study established a fully wearable system, based on commercially available sensors (inertial measurement units + pressure insoles), that can measure both kinematic and kinetic motion data simultaneously and support wireless frame-by-frame streaming. In addition, its capability and accuracy were tested against a conventional laboratory-based setup. An experiment was conducted, with 9 participants wearing the wearable measurement system and performing 13 daily motion activities, from slow walking to fast running, together with vertical jump, squat, lunge, and single-leg landing, inside the capture space of the laboratory-based motion capture system. The recorded sensor data were post-processed to obtain joint angles, ground reaction forces (GRFs), and joint torques (via multi-body inverse dynamics). Compared to the laboratory-based system, the established wearable measurement system can measure accurate information of all lower limb joint angles (Pearson’s r = 0.929), vertical GRFs (Pearson’s r = 0.954), and ankle joint torques (Pearson’s r = 0.917). Center of pressure (CoP) in the anterior–posterior direction and knee joint torques were fairly matched (Pearson’s r = 0.683 and 0.612, respectively). Calculated hip joint torques and measured medial–lateral CoP did not match with the laboratory-based system (Pearson’s r = 0.21 and 0.47, respectively). Furthermore, both raw and processed datasets are openly accessible (https://doi.org/10.5281/zenodo.6457662). Documentation, data processing codes, and guidelines to establish the real-time wearable kinetic measurement system are also shared (https://github.com/HuaweiWang/WearableMeasurementSystem).

This study presents a new wearable insole pressure sensor (IPS), composed of fabric coated in a carbon nanotube-based composite thin film, and validates its use for quantifying ground reaction forces (GRFs) during human walking. Healthy young adults (n = 7) walked on a treadmill at three different speeds while data were recorded simultaneously from the IPS and a force plate (FP). The IPS was compared against the FP by evaluating differences between the two instruments under two different assessments: (1) comparing the two peak forces at weight acceptance and push-off (2PK) and (2) comparing the absolute maximum (MAX) of each gait cycle. Agreement between the two systems was evaluated using the Bland–Altman method. For the 2PK assessment, the group mean of differences (MoD) was −1.3 ± 4.3% body weight (BW) and the distance between the MoD and the limits of agreement (2S) was 25.4 ± 11.1% BW. For the MAX assessment, the average MoD across subjects was 1.9 ± 3.0% BW, and 2S was 15.8 ± 9.3% BW. The results of this study show that this sensor technology can be used to obtain accurate measurements of peak walking forces with a basic calibration and consequently open new opportunities to monitor GRF outside of the laboratory.

The development of wearable technology, which enables motion tracking analysis for human movement outside the laboratory, can improve awareness of personal health and performance. This study used a wearable smart sock prototype to track foot–ankle kinematics during gait movement. Multivariable linear regression and two deep learning models, including long short-term memory (LSTM) and convolutional neural networks, were trained to estimate the joint angles in sagittal and frontal planes measured by an optical motion capture system. Participant-specific models were established for ten healthy subjects walking on a treadmill. The prototype was tested at various walking speeds to assess its ability to track movements for multiple speeds and generalize models for estimating joint angles in sagittal and frontal planes. LSTM outperformed other models with lower mean absolute error (MAE), lower root mean squared error, and higher R-squared values. The average MAE score was less than 1.138° and 0.939° in sagittal and frontal planes, respectively, when training models for each speed and 2.15° and 1.14° when trained and evaluated for all speeds. These results indicate wearable smart socks to generalize foot–ankle kinematics over various walking speeds with relatively low error and could consequently be used to measure gait parameters without the need for a lab-constricted motion capture system.

Cumulative back muscle fatigue plays a role in the occurrence of low-back injuries in occupations that require repetitive lifting of heavy loads and working in forward leaning postures. Lift-support exoskeletons have the potential to reduce back and hip muscle activity, thereby delaying the onset of fatigue in these muscles. Therefore, exoskeletons are being considered a potentially important tool to further reduce workload-related injuries. However, today no standards have been established on how to benchmark the support level of lift-support exoskeletons. This work proposes an experimental protocol to quantify the support level of a lift-support exoskeletons on instant changes in muscle activity and fatigue development while maintaining a static forward leaning posture. It then applies the protocol to experimentally assess the effect of the support provided by a commercially available lift-support exoskeleton, the LiftSuit 2.0 (Auxivo AG, Schwerzenbach, Switzerland), on the user. In a sample of 14 participants, the amplitude of the muscle activity of the back muscles $ \left({\Delta}_{\mathrm{erectorspinae},\mathrm{thoracic}}\hskip0.35em =\hskip0.35em 33.0\%,{\Delta}_{\mathrm{erectorspinae},\mathrm{lumbar}}\hskip0.35em =\hskip0.35em 13.2\%\right) $ and hip muscles ( $ {\Delta}_{\mathrm{gluteusmaximus}}\hskip0.35em =\hskip0.35em 16.3\% $ ) was significantly reduced. Wearing the exoskeleton significantly reduced the amount of fatigue developed during the task ( $ {\Delta}_{\mathrm{quadratuslumborum}}\hskip0.35em =\hskip0.35em 10.1\%,{\Delta}_{\mathrm{gluteusmaximus}}\hskip0.35em =\hskip0.35em 44.0\% $ ). Changes in muscle fatigue can be objectively recorded and correlated with relevant changes for exoskeleton users: the time a task can be performed and perceived low-back fatigue. Thus, including such measures of fatigue in standardized benchmarking procedures will help quantify the benefits of exoskeletons for occupational use.

Lameness is an indicator of pain and suffering, which has substantial animal welfare and economic impact on the dairy industry. Subjective locomotion scoring is unreliable for detecting mild cases of lameness in dairy herds. Undetected lameness can progress to a more serious and painful state with unfavourable prognosis. The aim of this study was to conduct an investigation on the use of a pressure plate for early detection of lameness in dairy heifers compared to a subjective visual scoring system. Seven heifers deemed sound, on the basis of a visual scoring system, were walked through a chute where a pressure plate was disguised on the floor. Claws were then inspected during trimming and revealed no lesions (n = 3) and hairy heel warts on at least one hind claw (n = 4). Peak vertical force (PVF) and right-left hind limb PVF symmetry were calculated. Sound heifers demonstrated significantly higher PVF and better right-left hind limb symmetry than those with hairy heel warts. Using a pressure plate, gait abnormalities from foot lesions that were undiagnosed using a subjective lameness scoring system, were detected. Early detection of lameness is vital to reduce dairy industry losses and to improve animal welfare.

The development of exoskeletons is currently a lengthy process full of challenges. We are proposing a framework to accelerate the process and make the resulting exoskeletons more user-centered. The needed accomplishments in science are described in an effort to lay the foundation for future research projects. Since the early 2000s, exoskeletons have been discussed as an emerging technology in industrial, medical, or military applications. Those systems are designed to support people during manual tasks. At first, those systems lacked broad acceptance. Many models found their niches in ongoing developments and more diverse systems entering the market. There are still applications that are in dire need of such assistance. Due to the lack of experience with body-worn robotics, the development of such systems has been shaped by trial and error. The lack of legacy products results in longer development times. In this paper, a process to generate a framework is presented to display the required research to enable future exoskeleton designers. Owing to their proximity to the user’s body, exoskeletons are highly complex systems that need sophisticated subsystems, such as kinematic, control, interaction design, or actuators, to be accepted by users. Due to the wide variety of fields and high user demands, a synchronized multidisciplinary effort is necessary. To achieve this, a process to develop a modular framework for exoskeleton design is proposed. It focuses on user- and use-case-centered solutions for matching kinematics, actuation, and control. To ensure the usefulness of the framework, an evaluation of the incorporated solutions is required.

Multimodal digital data registered with wearable biosensors have emerged as highly complementary of clinical pencil-and-paper criteria, offering new insights in ways to detect and diagnose various aspects of Parkinson’s disease (PD). A pressing question is how to combine both the clinical knowledge of PD and the new technology to create interpretable digital biomarkers easily obtainable with off-the-shelf technology. Several challenges concerning disparity in biophysical units, anatomical differences across participants, sensor positioning, and sampling resolution are addressed in this work, along with identification of optimal parameters to automatically differentiate patients with PD from controls. We combine data from a multitude of biosensors registering signals from the central (electroencephalography) and peripheral (magnetometry, kinematics) nervous systems, inclusive of the autonomic nervous system (electrocardiogram), as the participants perform natural tasks requiring different levels of intentional planning and automatic control. We find that magnetometer data during walking, across a variety of amplitude and timing signals, provide optimal separation of PD from neurotypical controls. We conclude that using multimodal signals within the context of actions that bear different levels of intent, can be revealing of features of PD that would scape the naked eye. Further, we add that clinical criteria combined with such optimal digital parameter spaces offer a far more complete picture of PD than using either one of these pieces of data alone.

The form–function conceptual framework, which assumes a strong relationship between the structure of a particular trait and its function, has been crucial for understanding morphological variation and locomotion among extant and fossil species across many disciplines. In biological anthropology, it is the lens through which many important questions and hypotheses have been tackled with respect to relationships between morphology and locomotor kinematics, energetics and performance. However, it is becoming increasingly evident that the morphologies of fossil hominins, apes and humans can confer considerable locomotor diversity and flexibility, and can do so with a range of kinematics depending on soft tissue plasticity and environmental and cultural factors. This complexity is not built into traditional biomechanical or mathematical models of relationships between structure and kinematics or energetics, limiting our interpretation of what bone structure is telling us about behaviour in the past. The nine papers presented in this Special Collection together address some of the challenges that variation in the relationship between form and function pose in evolutionary biomechanics, to better characterise the complexity linking structure and function and to provide tools through which we may begin to incorporate some of this complexity into our functional interpretations.

Biomechanical properties of the cell wall (CW) are important for many developmental and adaptive responses in plants. Expansins were shown to mediate pH-dependent CW enlargement via a process called CW loosening. Here, we provide a brief overview of expansin occurrence in plant and non-plant species, their structure and mode of action including the role of hormone-regulated CW acidification in the control of expansin activity. We depict the historical as well as recent CW models, discuss the role of expansins in the CW biomechanics and address the developmental importance of expansin-regulated CW loosening in cell elongation and new primordia formation. We summarise the data published so far on the role of expansins in the abiotic stress response as well as the rather scarce evidence and hypotheses on the possible mechanisms underlying expansin-mediated abiotic stress resistance. Finally, we wrap it up by highlighting possible future directions in expansin research.

Plants acclimate to various types of mechanical stresses through thigmomorphogenesis and alterations in their mechanical properties. Although resemblance between wind- and touch-induced responses provides the foundation for studies where wind influence was mimicked by mechanical perturbations, factorial experiments revealed that it is not always straightforward to extrapolate results induced by one type of perturbation to the other. To investigate whether wind-induced changes in morphological and biomechanical traits can be reproduced, we subjected Arabidopsis thaliana to two vectorial brushing treatments. Both treatments significantly affected the length, mechanical properties and anatomical tissue composition of the primary inflorescence stem. While some of the morphological changes were found to be in line with those induced by wind, changes in the mechanical properties exhibited opposite trends irrespective of the brushing direction. Overall, a careful design of the brushing treatment gives the possibility to obtain a closer match to wind-induced changes, including a positive tropic response.

The fossil record is scarce and incomplete by nature. Animals and ecological processes devour soft tissue and important bony details over time and, when the dust settles, we are faced with a patchy record full of variation. Fossil taxa are usually defined by craniodental characteristics, so unless postcranial bones are found associated with a skull, assignment to taxon is unstable. Naming a locomotor category based on fossil bone morphology by analogy to living hominoids is not uncommon, and when no single locomotor label fits, postcrania are often described as exhibiting a ‘mosaic’ of traits. Here, we contend that the unavoidable variation that characterises the fossil record can be described far more rigorously based on extensive work in human neurobiology and neuroanatomy, movement sciences and motor control and biomechanics research. In neurobiology, degeneracy is a natural mechanism of adaptation allowing system elements that are structurally different to perform the same function. This concept differs from redundancy as understood in engineering, where the same function is performed by identical elements. Assuming degeneracy, structurally different elements are able to produce different outputs in a range of environmental contexts, favouring ecological robusticity by enabling adaptations. Furthermore, as degeneracy extends to genome level, genetic variation is sustained, so that genes which might benefit an organism in a different environment remain part of the genome, favouring species’ evolvability.

Exoskeletons that assist the hip, knee, and ankle joints have begun to improve human mobility, particularly by reducing the metabolic cost of walking. However, direct comparisons of optimal assistance of these joints, or their combinations, have not yet been possible. Assisting multiple joints may be more beneficial than the sum of individual effects, because muscles often span multiple joints, or less effective, because single-joint assistance can indirectly aid other joints. In this study, we used a hip–knee–ankle exoskeleton emulator paired with human-in-the-loop optimization to find single-joint, two-joint, and whole-leg assistance that maximally reduced the metabolic cost of walking. Hip-only and ankle-only assistance reduced the metabolic cost of walking by 26 and 30% relative to walking in the device unassisted, confirming that both joints are good targets for assistance (N = 3). Knee-only assistance reduced the metabolic cost of walking by 13%, demonstrating that effective knee assistance is possible (N = 3). Two-joint assistance reduced the metabolic cost of walking by between 33 and 42%, with the largest improvements coming from hip-ankle assistance (N = 3). Assisting all three joints reduced the metabolic cost of walking by 50%, showing that at least half of the metabolic energy expended during walking can be saved through exoskeleton assistance (N = 4). Changes in kinematics and muscle activity indicate that single-joint assistance indirectly assisted muscles at other joints, such that the improvement from whole-leg assistance was smaller than the sum of its single-joint parts. Exoskeletons can assist the entire limb for maximum effect, but a single well-chosen joint can be more efficient when considering additional factors such as weight and cost.