A new collaboration with the Cajal Institute in Madrid has just begun: this time our students Pietro and Marco will be involved in a project called CADENCE.

CADENCE is a project that will evaluate the H2 exoskeleton of Toledo hospital using the instrumented crutches developed in our laboratory. They will help users to maintain balance and at the same time provide values of force directly related to ground reactions.

The project will involve healthy users, who will be guided by audio feedback, allowing them to step on when they reach a specific force threshold on the crutches. In this way, we hope to reproduce the movements of a paraplegic exoskeleton user.
The target metrics chosen are the forces at the ground (provided thanks to the instrumented crutches), the kinematics of the user and the spatio-temporal parameters of gait, acquired using a Vicon system and reflective markers on the exoskeleton and its pilot.

The experiment will be performed with the assistance of Technaid (Arganda del Rey), and CSIS (Madrid), where our students will spend the summer.