Exoskeleton boot makes for more efficient walking

exoskeleton boot

Walking on a trail becomes a bit easier with a pair of unpowered exoskeleton boots.

Stephen Thrift

Some boots are made for walking, and some are made for walking more efficiently.

Scientists have developed an unpowered exoskeleton “boot” that reduces the amount of energy spent while walking by about 7 percent. The boot has a passive clutch that activates a spring in parallel with the Achilles tendon when the foot is on the ground. That offloads the effort of the calf muscles, making walking easier, researchers report April 1 in Nature.

Seven percent doesn’t seem like much of an energy savings. But humans have been walking for a long time, and finding that a slight energy savings is still possible suggests there’s still much more to learn about walking, the team says.

Ashley Yeager is the associate news editor at Science News. She has worked at The Scientist, the Simons Foundation, Duke University and the W.M. Keck Observatory, and was the web producer for Science News from 2013 to 2015. She has a bachelor’s degree in journalism from the University of Tennessee, Knoxville, and a master’s degree in science writing from MIT.

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