Effortlessly performing activities of daily living constitutes a cornerstone of our personal independence. Naturally, various forms of upper limb impairments can have a substantial impact on quality of life. We developed the Myoshirt, a textile-based soft wearable robot, or exomuscle, that autonomously follows the user’s movements and thereby assists the shoulder against gravity. With the Myoshirt, participants without impairments (n = 10, 5 male) experienced a delayed onset of muscular fatigue by 51.1 s (36.1%, P < 0.001), while during a functional task their muscular activity decreased by 49.1% (P < 0.001). Analogously, two participants with upper limb impairments due to a muscular dystrophy and a spinal cord injury experienced a delayed onset of muscular fatigue during unloaded arm lifts by 256.4 s (61.5%) and by 450.6 s (210.3%), respectively. Our evidence suggests that the Myoshirt is an effective tool that intuitively assists the shoulder during functional reaching tasks, with the potential of increasing the personal independence of people with upper limb impairments.

轻松完成日常生活活动是我们个人独立的基石。自然，各种形式的上肢损伤会对生活质量产生重大影响。我们开发了 Myoshirt，这是一种基于纺织品的柔软可穿戴机器人或外肌，它可以自主跟随用户的动作，从而帮助肩部抵抗重力。使用 Myoshirt，没有损伤的参与者（n  = 10，5 名男性）经历了延迟 51.1 秒的肌肉疲劳发作（36.1%，P  < 0.001），而在功能性任务期间，他们的肌肉活动减少了 49.1%（P < 0.001)。类似地，两名因肌肉营养不良和脊髓损伤导致上肢损伤的参与者在无负荷的手臂提升过程中出现肌肉疲劳的延迟时间分别为 256.4 秒（61.5%）和 450.6 秒（210.3%）。我们的证据表明，Myoshirt 是一种有效的工具，可以在功能性伸手任务中直观地辅助肩部，并有可能提高上肢残障人士的个人独立性。