The exoskeleton \u2014 which looks a bit like a large, see-through caterpillar attached to an arm sleeve \u2014 inflates to help drive arm movements. It\u2019s one of an increasing number of wearable technologies aimed at assisting mobility for people paralyzed by illness or spinal cord injury and at reducing the strain of physically demanding jobs. The latter is significant considering workplace injuries due to overexertion impact hundreds of thousands of people and cost more than $12 billion in the United States each year, according to a 2023 report<\/a> from insurance provider Liberty Mutual. <\/p>\n The air-powered wearable elbow exoskeleton, on Thursday, Dec. 4, 2025, at UT Arlington Research Institute in Fort Worth.<\/p>\n Shafkat Anowar \/ Staff Photographer<\/p>\n Breaking News<\/p>\n By signing up, you agree to our\u00a0Terms of Service<\/a>\u00a0and\u00a0Privacy Policy.<\/a><\/p>\n That toll has not gone unnoticed. Exoskeleton suits are already being explored by automakers to reduce worker strain, said Muthu Wijesundara<\/a>, principal research scientist at the UT Arlington Research Institute in Fort Worth, who co-led the study. <\/p>\n But his hopes for the robotic arm \u2014 and other exoskeletons his team is developing \u2014 are centered on improving the lives of people whose mobility has been limited by medical conditions such as a stroke or cerebral palsy.<\/p>\n Like a balloon<\/p>\n Exoskeletons have long been a staple of science fiction, with on-screen soldiers and superheroes donning indestructible, full-body armor that lets them outrun and outgun their enemies.<\/p>\n In reality, since the first prototypes of the 1960s<\/a>, exoskeletons have had humbler aims: improving mobility, easing physical demands on the body and speeding up learning in people such as expert pianists<\/a> who have hit a plateau in their finger dexterity. <\/p>\n Chloe Angus, director of Lived Experience at Human in Motion Robotics and paraplegic, stands and moves with help from the XoMotion exoskeleton at the Human In Motion Robotics booth during the CES tech show Wednesday, Jan. 8, 2025, in Las Vegas. The wearable robotic exoskeleton is designed to assist patients with mobility impairments due to spinal cord injuries, stroke and other neurological conditions in standing up and walking. (AP Photo\/John Locher)<\/p>\n John Locher \/ AP<\/p>\n Today, exoskeletons come in many forms \u2014 some powered by batteries, some by robotics and others by simple mechanisms like springs. Most of the ones used to assist movement, whether for people in rehabilitation or those who are physically active and combating fatigue<\/a>, focus on the legs and rely on rigid frames. The device from Wijesundara\u2019s team takes a different tack: It\u2019s soft, air-powered and designed for the upper body.<\/p>\n \u201cHard robotics are pretty good for the lower body because they can support a lot of weight and they\u2019re easier to adjust because the body parts are bigger,\u201d Wijesundara said. \u201cBut when it comes to the hand, for example, everybody\u2019s hands are slightly different. Adjusting to their joints is really hard. If you don\u2019t do it right, you create problems.\u201d <\/p>\n Assist the lift<\/p>\n To get around that challenge, Wijesundara and his colleagues began developing soft robotic exoskeletons several years ago, starting with a hand-worn device. The current arm model is what engineers call pneumatically actuated. Compressed air flows into its soft chambers that inflate and swell like a balloon, gently pushing at the elbow to help drive the motion. That extra nudge boosts the wearer\u2019s strength, so their muscles don\u2019t have to work as hard. An external control box regulates the airflow and pressure that powers the sleeve. <\/p>\n Research scientist Veysel Erel (left) demonstrates the air-powered wearable elbow exoskeleton with doctoral student Eshwara Prasad Sridhar, on Thursday, Dec. 4, 2025, at UT Arlington Research Institute in Fort Worth. <\/p>\n Shafkat Anowar \/ Staff Photographer<\/p>\n The researchers had 19 healthy volunteers \u2014 mostly male and college students \u2014 wear the robotic arm while completing upper-body tasks such as lifting a dumbbell or using a drill with the exoskeleton turned on or off. Sensors tracked how hard the participants\u2019 arm muscles were working. <\/p>\n When the exoskeleton was on, muscle activity dropped by about 22% in the biceps and by about 18% in the triceps. These changes suggested the muscles didn\u2019t need to work as hard. The team also found the sleeve could fully inflate in about two-tenths of a second, fast enough to keep up with natural arm movements, which could be key for comfort and for reducing the risk of injury over time. <\/p>\n Veysel Erel<\/a>, a research scientist at UT Arlington who worked on the study, said the robotic arm is one of several air-powered exoskeletons the team hopes will eventually become common in rehabilitation and physically demanding industries. For rehab, one goal is to build sensors into the devices that feed data to a computer algorithm that learns over time how much physical help a person needs and fine-tunes the air pressure accordingly. The team has tested that adaptive approach in a soft hand exoskeleton for people recovering from stroke and hopes to extend it to the arm device. (Elsewhere, researchers are looking into<\/a> integrating artificial intelligence into exoskeletons.) <\/p>\n Ultimately, Erel hopes the work he and his colleagues are doing with exoskeletons will make a tangible difference in people\u2019s lives.<\/p>\n Miriam Fauzia is a science reporting fellow at The Dallas Morning News. Her fellowship is supported by the University of Texas at Dallas. The News makes all editorial decisions.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"What if you could wear a robotic device that boosted your strength and endurance, making heavy lifting and…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":80231,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[10],"tags":[150,116,118,117,5406,223,4919],"class_list":{"0":"post-80230","1":"post","2":"type-post","3":"status-publish","4":"format-standard","5":"has-post-thumbnail","7":"category-fort-worth","8":"tag-arlington","9":"tag-fort-worth","10":"tag-fort-worth-headlines","11":"tag-fort-worth-news","12":"tag-innovation","13":"tag-news","14":"tag-science-and-medicine"},"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-tx\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/80230","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-tx\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-tx\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-tx\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-tx\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=80230"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-tx\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/80230\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-tx\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/80231"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-tx\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=80230"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-tx\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=80230"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-tx\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=80230"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}![\"The](\"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-tx\/wp-content\/uploads\/2025\/12\/SOK2HQWX35GRXDWIHVCI7GM254.jpg\")
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