Now paralyzed people will walk again with the help of Robotic Trousers.

Could the answer to mobility problems one day be as on a pair of trousers? A research team led by Bristol University's Professor Jonathan Rosseiter has recently unveiled a prototype pair of Robotic trousers that they hope could help some disabled people walk without other assistance.

As an engineer who researches ways of helping people with spinal chord injuries move their limbs again. I'm acutely aware of how the loss of mobility can affect a person's quality of life, and how restoring that movement can help.

Given the staggering number of people with disabilities( over 6.5 m people with mobility problems in the UK alone) and our aging population, devices that improve mobility could help a large segment of the population.

Yet despite 50 years of research, this kind of technology has rarely been adopted outside the lab. So is the novel development of robotic trousers on course to finally take a working mobility technology into the home?

Unlike the rigid robotic device in the Wallace and Gromit animated film The Wrong trousers, the new so called "Right Trousers" use soft artificial muscles to create movement, as well as harnessing the wearers real muscles. These mimic human muscles in producing a force simply by becoming shorter and pulling on both ends.

By bundling several artificial muscles together, the assistive trousers can move a joint such as the knee, and help the user with movements such as standing up from a chair. Because the artificial muscles are elastic and soft they are safer than traditional motors used in rigid robotic exoskeletons that, although powerful, are stiff and uncomfortable.

The researchers have put forward several different ideas for how to shorten the artificial muscles and create movement. One design adapts the concept of air muscles, which are effectively balloons that expand sideways and shorten in length as they fill with air.

Another proposed design uses electricity to shorten an artificial muscle made from a gel placed between two copper plates. The gel is attracted to areas of high electrical voltage. So creating two different voltages in the plates forces the gel to shrink around one of them, bringing them closer together and shortening the muscle.

Another technology integrated in the assistive trousers is Functional Electrical Simulation(FES). Electrodes woven into the trousers strategically located over muscles can send specially designed electrical impulses into the body to hijack the communication channel between the brain and the muscles and directly command muscles to contract.

By using existing muscles and bypassing the brain, the assistive trousers can even command muscles and bypassing the brain, the assistive trousers can even command muscles that the wearers might have difficulty using on their own( for example due to stroke).

The trousers can also help users who struggle to stand for any length of time thanks to specially made plastic knee braces allows the knee to move or lock in position to maintain standing without much effort needed by the muscles(real or artificial).

The researchers suggest creating an embedded electronic system that receives information about the wearer's motion and state from sensors embedded through the trousers, and controls all of the system to tailor movement to user's needs. The electronics would allow users to control their movement via controls directly woven onto the trousers. The challenge will be to time the movement of the artificial muscles and the electrical simulation of the real muscles in response to the user's posture.

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