[araes]

To do this in full production mode, I would think you would probably make it user tunable.

As the article says, most of it is fairly simple. Just a spring for a cable and a ratchet that moves with the motion of your foot (kind of auto tuned), and grabs the spring.

If the spring was remotely tensible, you could probably just walk and adjust it until it felt best.

You could probably also do that at various speeds and then create a smooth mapping of ensuing parameters for various gaits.

[maxerickson]

Yes, I think it has to either be tunable or self adjusting. If the ratchet releases early, you are just carrying it around. If the ratchet releases late, I expect it will result in uncomfortable tugging.

So my question is more about the behavior of the implementation, not about the design space for it.