Wearable tails help elderly folks keep their balance
Researchers at Keio University developed a wearable robotic tail called Arque to help elderly individuals maintain balance by mimicking the biomechanical functions of animal tails. The device uses sensors and pneumatic muscles to shift the user's center of mass in response to posture changes. While the original project has seen little advancement since 2019, a team at Queen Mary University of London is continuing research into robotic tails for balance assistance.
- ▪Arque is a meter-long wearable robotic tail developed by researchers at Keio University Graduate School of Media Design to assist with balance.
- ▪The tail uses pneumatic artificial muscles and sensors to respond to the wearer's posture, shifting weight to maintain equilibrium.
- ▪Trials of a similar robotic tail by Queen Mary University of London showed an 89% accuracy in position control and a 57 ms response time.
- ▪In tests, the Queen Mary device reduced center of pressure displacement by 59% when lifting weights, improving balance.
- ▪Despite initial promise, the Arque project has not advanced to clinical trials or commercial development since its 2019 debut.
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Wearable tails help elderly folks keep their balance Rob Beschizza 4:43 pm Thu Apr 30, 2026 The Arque tail, from 2019 About 25 million years after our ancestors traded theirs for an upright stance, a research team at Keio University Graduate School of Media Design gave our long-lost tails a comeback tour. The prototype, dubbed Arque, was a meter-long wearable robot designed to help elderly users with balance problems. For most vertebrate animals, tail plays an important role for their body, providing variant functions to expand their mobility. In this work, Arque, we propose an artificial biomimicry-inspired anthropomorphic tail to allow us to alter our body momentum for assistive and haptic feedback applications. The pitch is biomimicry.
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