IROS 25

Conference

Towards Data-Driven Adaptive Exoskeleton Assistance for Post-stroke Gait

Fabian C. Weigend, Dabin K. Choe, Santiago Canete, Conor J. Walsh

*FCW, DC, SCR contributed equally to this work

Abstract: Recent work has shown that exoskeletons controlled through data-driven methods can dynamically adapt assistance to various tasks for healthy young adults. However, applying these methods to populations with neuromotor gait deficits, such as post-stroke hemiparesis, is challenging. This
is due not only to high population heterogeneity and gait variability but also to a lack of post-stroke gait datasets to train accurate models. Despite these challenges, data-driven methods offer a promising avenue for control, potentially allowing exoskeletons to function safely and effectively in unstructured community settings. This work presents a first step towards en-
abling adaptive plantarflexion and dorsiflexion assistance from data-driven torque estimation during post-stroke walking. We trained a multi-task Temporal Convolutional Network (TCN) using collected data from four post-stroke participants walking on a treadmill (R2 of 0.74 ± 0.13). The model uses data from three inertial measurement units (IMU) and was pretrained on
healthy walking data from 6 participants. We implemented a wearable prototype for our ankle torque estimation approach for exoskeleton control and demonstrated the viability of real-time sensing, estimation, and actuation with one post-stroke participant.