Dephy ExoBoot

Was quote onlyDephy never published a price. The ExoBoot was sold and rented to research labs and the US Army, for example a firm-fixed-price 3-month rental of an EB51 actuator by Army Medical Command (GovTribe), and the Army's 4-year, $6.9 million exoskeleton research program evaluated it alongside the Lockheed Martin ONYX (estimate).

Discontinued · unavailableSDK or research modeAnkle exoskeleton~1.2 kg per ankleUntetheredUS Army trials

UnavailableWas sold or rented to research labs and government programs by quote from Dephy, never in a store. Dephy now markets only the Sidekick, so new lab orders appear to have ended (unconfirmed). Dephy ↗

Control: Labs command and log the boots from a laptop or embedded computer through Dephy's research interface.

Dephy ↗Army study (army.mil) ↗Frontiers study with the EB60 ↗Exoskeleton Report directory ↗EB-51 lab controller (GitHub) ↗

Overview

The ExoBoot is Dephy's autonomous powered ankle exoskeleton, a pair of shin-mounted motor units that strap to a boot and add push-off power, built by an MIT Media Lab spinout founded in 2016 in Maynard, Massachusetts. The EB51 and EB60 versions were sold or rented to research labs such as the University of Michigan Neurobionics Lab and to US Army groups, which tested soldiers walking with heavy rucksacks at Aberdeen Proving Ground in 2021. The device needs no input from the wearer and learns the timing of each step on its own, and later work with Boston Engineering aimed to make it lighter and more rugged for soldiers. Dephy's website now shows only the consumer Sidekick that grew out of the ExoBoot, so whether new ExoBoots can still be ordered by labs is unclear (unconfirmed). Rival research platforms include the tethered Humotech Caplex ankle emulators and Stanford's exoskeleton boot.

Specifications

Category	Exoskeletons & exosuits · Full-body, military & research
Released	2018
Country	USA
Availability	Discontinued · unavailable
Programmability	Limited SDK
Built-in autonomy	Reactive · Responds to its surroundings without a map, such as avoiding obstacles or following a person
LLM support	None · No voice assistant or LLM.
Vision sensors	No vision sensors
Actuators	Brushless / direct-drive motors
Audio	No audio
Compute type	Proprietary / undisclosed
Control	SDK or research mode
Weight	~1.2 kg per ankle (EB60)
Assistance	A brushless motor on each shin tightens a flat cable to the boot heel during push-off, adding a burst of ankle plantarflexion power. A 2025 study set the peak at 35 Nm and measured an average of 18 to 24 Nm delivered per step.
Joints	Ankles
Battery & runtime	Battery on each boot unit, capacity and runtime not published (unconfirmed).
Operation	No user controls during walking. An onboard computer uses sensors, human gait models and machine learning to decide when and how hard to assist; researchers set torque profiles from a laptop.
Sensors	Onboard sensors log ankle velocity, acceleration and torque at 200 Hz; the full sensor list is not published.
Compute	Onboard Dephy controller, chip not published
SDK	Research interface for labs to command torque and log data, with open lab controllers on GitHub (e.g. University of Michigan Neurobionics EB-51 code); details not published by Dephy (unconfirmed)