How a frame moves with you.

Every exoskeleton lives or dies on the same question: can it put the right amount of force at the right joint, at the right instant, without ever fighting the person wearing it? LiftDrive is our answer for the lower body. Compact electric actuators sit at the hips and knees – the two joints that do the heavy lifting when you rise from a chair or push off into a step – and add torque in the same direction you are already moving. The intent is not to move you like a puppet, but to split the work, so a motion that had become exhausting becomes possible again.

The honest engineering problem is that assistance and safety pull against each other. More torque can mean more help, but also more risk if the timing is wrong; less torque is safer but may not be enough to matter. Getting that balance right – strong enough to be worth wearing, gentle enough to always be safe, efficient enough to last a useful part of a day – is the central reason Stride is framed as a concept targeting 2030 rather than a product we claim ships today. We would rather under-promise the assistance and earn your trust than overstate what a wearable motor can safely do.

Underneath LiftDrive sits a principle we call SoftStop: the frame is designed never to force a joint past where you want it to go. If a sensor reading is uncertain, or you resist, the actuators are meant to yield and hold rather than push. An assistive machine has to be safe first and helpful second, in that order, and everything about LiftDrive is being designed around that rule.

For many people, the thing standing between them and moving freely is not strength but confidence – the fear of losing balance. TrueBalance is the layer of Stride aimed squarely at that fear. Using the same body-motion sensing that feeds IntentSense, it watches for the early signs of sway and is designed to make small, well-timed adjustments at the hips and knees to help you stay centered over your feet, the way a steadying hand at your elbow might.

We want to be very plain about the limits here, because balance is where over-promising does real harm. TrueBalance is designed to assist stability and reduce the chance of a wobble turning into a stumble. It is not a guarantee against falling, and it cannot be – no wearable machine can promise that, and anyone who tells you otherwise is selling something. Hard surfaces, sudden obstacles, and the wide variety of real human bodies and conditions all set honest limits we are still characterizing.

Because of that, TrueBalance is being designed to fail gracefully. If the frame senses it cannot safely keep you upright, the goal is a controlled, gentle response – helping you toward a stable, seated, or supported position rather than resisting to the last instant. Assisting balance is a promise we intend to keep carefully, and to back with real testing before we make it loudly.