ExoKit is a novice-friendly basis for constructing powered exoskeletons
— Could ninth, 2025
Our fashionable technological world is constructed upon shared information. If you wish to construct a automobile, you don’t must reinvent the wheel—you may depend on present analysis and engineering, so you may skip forward to the extra complicated specialised work. Such foundations exist in each business for each expertise, however powered exoskeletons are nonetheless very new and accessible foundations are missing. That’s why a workforce from Saarland College’s Human Laptop Interplay Lab created ExoKit to offer novices a place to begin when constructing exoskeletons.
The aim of ExoKit is to offer builders, engineers, and researchers a easy and easy-to-use basis, so that they don’t must reinvent the “wheel” of powered exoskeletons. ExoKit consists of modular {hardware} based mostly on common off-the-shelf elements, microcontroller firmware for Arduino improvement boards, and software program instruments. With ExoKit, builders can rapidly make purposeful exoskeleton prototypes.
ExoKit takes benefit of Dynamixel servo motors, that are simple to supply and comparatively inexpensive. These are appropriate with any Arduino improvement board, however the Saarland workforce used an Arduino Mega 2560 paired with a Dynamixel protect. That may deal with as much as six servos. The customized mechanical components have been designed in Autodesk Fusion 360. The fashions are modifiable to swimsuit totally different exoskeleton designs and are 3D-printable. Sensors embrace potentiometers to supply suggestions on joint positions and cargo cells to watch forces.
Tying all of that {hardware} collectively is the customized ExoKit firmware library for Arduino improvement boards. With very minimal programming, builders can use that to begin studying sensor information and controlling the servo motors.
Learn extra about ExoKit within the workforce’s paper, which was offered on the 2025 ACM CHI Convention on Human Components in Computing Techniques in Yokohama, Japan.
