J.F. Duval, H. M. Herr

Abstract

Embedded systems for wearable robotics are ideally low-cost, lightweight, miniature, reliable and safe. They have high peak output and negligible standby power, are simple to use and program, can support high-performance real-time control loops and accept additional degrees of freedom, input and output devices. However, practical solutions cannot accommodate all of these criteria and compromises are made; while commercial systems favor cost, safety and reliability, research projects emphasize ease of development and rapid prototyping. To this day, no de facto embedded system exists, impeding the development of novel wearable robots. This work introduces FlexSEA, the FLEXible, Scalable Electronics Architecture designed for wearable robotic applications. This accessible and open-source architecture is useable across various wearable robotic research initiatives, eliminating the need to design a new embedded system for each and every research project.