Ekso Bionics Holdings Inc (EKSO)

[Rhetorical]

The basic premise of the most recent patent is that muscles should be far away from what they are actually moving in order to increase dexterity. For example, human fingers are controlled by muscles in the forearms, not by muscles in the fingers.

In exoskeletons currently, actuators are largely co-located with the joint for simplicity. (see the bulky knobs coming off the GT located at each major joint actuated)

There are a few different models proposed to put the actuators further away, but it's easier said than done. For example, torsion has been proposed. The problem with torsion however, is that it creates a very large amount of wear and tear:

"even high tensile strength cord, after being twisted and untwisted many times, or having been subject to stress from a fall or misstep, may be at risk of breakage"

Ekso's patent has to do with a series of pulleys and a ball-screw&nut configuration that is a novel solution to this problem, allowing for actuators to be more centrally located while still maintaining structural integrity.

It's hard to know exactly how effective this will be, but obviously effective enough the company spent time and money to get it patented.

It seems to me that this research came out of the Warrior Web program, since the series of pulleys are what I consider to be the "web". This is simply an educated guess, I have no evidence for this.