These robotic shorts developed by Harvard scientists are designed to help you feel up to 12 pounds lighter while running

Wyss Institute at Harvard University

This Harvard-developed hip "exosuit" is the first of its kind to assist both walking and running.
The exosuit looks like a pair of robotic shorts. It tugs at the wearer’s legs, reducing the amount of oxygen used up while breathing.
This makes the wearer feel lighter while running or walking — 12.6 pounds lighter for runners, and 16.3 pounds lighter for walkers, according to the researchers.
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Harvard researchers at the university’s Wyss Institute have developed a hip "exosuit," and it looks like a pair of robotic shorts, as first reported by The Verge.

The soft exosuit makes walking and running easier through something called a cable actuation system: "The actuation cables apply a tensile force between the waist belt and thigh wraps to generate an external extension torque at the hip joint that works in concert with the gluteal muscles," Benjamin Boettner of the Wyss Institute writes.

In plain English, that means that the suit helps move the muscles in your hip and thigh area to make it easier to run and walk.

The exosuit reduces metabolic cost — or how much oxygen we use up while breathing — by 4% for running and 9% for walking. A reduction in metabolic cost makes the wearer feel lighter — 12.6 pounds lighter for runners, and 16.3 pounds lighter for walkers.

"While the metabolic reductions we found are modest, our study demonstrates that it is possible to have a portable wearable robot assist more than just a single activity, helping to pave the way for these systems to become ubiquitous in our lives," said Dr. Conor Walsh of the Wyss Institute, who led the study.

"We are excited to continue to apply it to a range of applications, including assisting those with gait impairments, industry workers at risk of injury performing physically strenuous tasks, or recreational weekend warriors," Walsh continued.

Check out the Harvard Wyss Institute’s breakdown of its newest exosuit:

The hip exosuit is a wearable — it fits on like a pair of shorts.

Wyss Institute at Harvard University/Vimeo

The video explains that while walking, our center of mass swings like an inverted pendulum.

Wyss Institute at Harvard University/Vimeo

Whereas for running, our center of mass moves more like a spring.

Wyss Institute at Harvard University/Vimeo

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