Multi-Mode Exoskeleton Boot to Facilitate Rehabilitation and Return to Service

More than half of military service members sustain a musculoskeletal injury each year, and the majority of those are attributed to the lower limb, leading to millions of days of limited duty annually and reduced overall readiness. To establish a leadership role, a solution will help strengthen holistic continuity of care across the phases of lower limb rehabilitation and enhance prevention, while also accelerating casualty response and providing ongoing support across return to duty. This proposal establishes FlyBand exoskeletons as a new platform technology, based upon a highly customizable light weight ankle-foot exoskeleton built into the structure of a military boot and capable of adapting to a wide variety of needs through a broad scope of FlyBand protective cartridges. Results Group has years of experience designing medical exoskeletons, and has the benefit of multiple years of research funded by the NIH, NIDILRR and the VA to help accelerate the delivery of its FlyBand exoBoot. The FlyBand exoBoot adapts well to the lateral support needs of service members which change throughout rehabilitation while also providing enhanced propulsion and offloading to reduce the effort of walking and protect soft-tissues. Being integrated into a boot makes compliance easy and helps maintain ongoing protection throughout rehabilitation. The FlyBand exoBoot uses a series of cartridges which enable it to provide superior adaptation across return to duty. Cartridges can easily be inserted and removed from the exoboot to provide lateral stability, propulsive offloading, rapid response to field ankle casualties, combat jumper ankle protection, resistance training, and amphibious performance. Prevention is critical in new trainees, who have a high incidence of ankle-foot issues which frequently prevent completion of training. This proposal will identify stakeholder requirements, develop and fabricate prototypes, and conduct biomechanical testing to evaluate their performance.