Abstract
Understanding the success of augmentative exoskeletons is critical to
their impact on society. Many exoskeletons are developed to address
impairments stemming from neuromotor pathology, which provides guidance
for understanding their abilities; however, for augmentative
exoskeletons that assist able-bodied users, a clear metric of success
remains an open question. In this study, we leverage an approach from
economics–the Vickrey second-price auction–to quantify the economic
value added by lower-limb exoskeletons during uphill walking. In our
protocol, participants describe the monetary compensation needed to
continue walking uphill for consecutive bouts of two minutes. To
incentivize truthful descriptions of participant’s “price to walk,”
their compensation amounts were provided as bids in Vickrey auctions
before each bout. We compared these data across different conditions to
determine the marginal value of the exoskeleton weight, assistance, and
weight + assistance. Our approach found that the total value of the
exoskeleton and its assistance was modest ($3.40/hr, SD: $3.35/hr);
while most participants found the assistance itself valuable
($19.76/hr, SD: $19.43/hr), this value was nearly offset by the cost
of wearing the exoskeleton weight (-$18.59/hr, SD: $18.28/hr). Our
approach and results demonstrate that economic value can be a powerful
tool to develop exoskeletons that maximize user benefit.