ExoKit: A Toolkit for Rapid Prototyping of Interactions for Arm-based Exoskeletons

TL;DR

ExoKit is a versatile, accessible toolkit that enables rapid prototyping of low-fidelity exoskeletons and their interactive behaviors, facilitating early-stage human-exoskeleton interaction design for novice roboticists.

Contribution

It introduces a modular hardware and software toolkit that simplifies the creation and programming of exoskeleton prototypes, filling a gap in accessible prototyping tools for HCI research.

Findings

Demonstrated versatility through various application cases

Validated ease of use via two user studies

Showed potential for early-stage interaction design

Abstract

Exoskeletons open up a unique interaction space that seamlessly integrates users' body movements with robotic actuation. Despite its potential, human-exoskeleton interaction remains an underexplored area in HCI, largely due to the lack of accessible prototyping tools that enable designers to easily develop exoskeleton designs and customized interactive behaviors. We present ExoKit, a do-it-yourself toolkit for rapid prototyping of low-fidelity, functional exoskeletons targeted at novice roboticists. ExoKit includes modular hardware components for sensing and actuating shoulder and elbow joints, which are easy to fabricate and (re)configure for customized functionality and wearability. To simplify the programming of interactive behaviors, we propose functional abstractions that encapsulate high-level human-exoskeleton interactions. These can be readily accessed either through ExoKit's command-line or graphical user interface, a Processing library, or microcontroller firmware, each targeted at different experience levels. Findings from implemented application cases and two usage studies demonstrate the versatility and accessibility of ExoKit for early-stage interaction design.