Underwater Exosuit Actuator Design for Unrestricted Bidirectional Hip Assistance During Flutter Kicking
Xiangyang Wang, Sida Du, Yue Ma, Jianquan Sun, Yongxuan Hong, Jiale Zhang, Chunjie Chen, Xinyu Wu
Abstract
Underwater assistance is crucial for individuals who depend on diving for their livelihood. In this paper, we propose a novel underwater exosuit actuator designed to assist with flutter kicking during diving, thereby decreasing the effort the diver has to exert. The actuator can provide bidirectional assistance to the up and downbeats when the diver kicks underwater, and has no restriction on leg movements when it is deactivated. Both the benchtop experiment and human subject tests were conducted to verify its performance. The benchtop experiment verified its kinematic features, while tests with five participants validated its assistive performance. The results indicate that the actuator delivers a peak torque of 0.0947 Nm/kg and a peak force of 100 N in both directions, while allowing free leg movement during walking or kicking when not powered, thus ensuring safety during diving.
BibTeX
@inproceedings{iros2025_underwaterexosui,
title = {Underwater Exosuit Actuator Design for Unrestricted Bidirectional Hip Assistance During Flutter Kicking},
author = {Xiangyang Wang and Sida Du and Yue Ma and Jianquan Sun and Yongxuan Hong and Jiale Zhang and Chunjie Chen and Xinyu Wu},
booktitle = {IROS 2025},
year = {2025}
}