The researchers are also starting to work with a disabled runner to examine whether an assistive exosuit could offer a benefit.
“It’s a great achievement, what they have done,” says Kaspar Althoefer, head of the Center for Advanced Robotics at Queen Mary University of London, who was not involved in the study. He is curious about how the exosuit could help sprinters cover even shorter distances.
“If they could manage to make a world-record holder run 0.68 seconds faster over 100 meters, I think it would be massive,” he adds.
However, training wearing such exosuits is unlikely to help athletes to run more quickly in races where they’re not allowed to don assistive technology. Although the suit encourages wearers to move their legs faster, it doesn’t help their muscles grow stronger, Althoefer says, pointing out that over-reliance on exosuits could, in theory, make runners weaker over time.
