Haptic wearables as sensory replacement, sensory augmentation and trainer – a review

Abstract

Sensory impairments decrease quality of life and can slow or hinder rehabilitation. Small, computationally powerful electronics have enabled the recent development of wearable systems aimed to improve function for individuals with sensory impairments. The purpose of this review is to synthesize current haptic wearable research for clinical applications involving sensory impairments. We define haptic wearables as untethered, ungrounded body worn devices that interact with skin directly or through clothing and can be used in natural environments outside a laboratory. Results of this review are categorized by degree of sensory impairment. Total impairment, such as in an amputee, blind, or deaf individual, involves haptics acting as sensory replacement; partial impairment, as is common in rehabilitation, involves haptics as sensory augmentation; and no impairment involves haptics as trainer. This review found that wearable haptic devices improved function for a variety of clinical applications including: rehabilitation, prosthetics, vestibular loss, osteoarthritis, vision loss and hearing loss. Future haptic wearables development should focus on clinical needs, intuitive and multimodal haptic displays, low energy demands, and biomechanical compliance for long-term usage.

Personalized Drug Administration to Patients with Parkinsons Disease: Manipulating Sensor Generated Data in Android Environments

“…We have witnessed the proliferation of wearable medical systems which have been paving the way towards pervasive and personalized healthcare [8,9,10,11,12,13].…”

A Fabric-Based Approach for Wearable Haptics

“…Looking at the state-of-the-art, it is possible to observe a number of strategies for stimulus delivery through wearable systems, specifically developed to generate vibrations [4], apply forces [11], stimulate skin using pin-arrays [12] or using electrocutaneous feedback [13], and considering different body locations for stimulus application, such as arm [7,14], foot [15], finger [5,16], among the others; the interested reader may refer to references [16,17] (for a review of these topics see Figure 1). [5,16,18]; wrist [19,21]; arm and forearm [14,20,22,23]; tongue and mouth [24][25][26]; head [27]; torso, trunk and shoulders [28][29][30]; leg [31,32]; foot [15,33].…”

“…Each of these strategies comes with pros and cons, which must be considered in light of the applications that WHS are designed for, such as rehabilitation, assistive robotics, guidance, among others-the interested reader can refer to reference [17] for further details. From a physiological point of view, different stimulation modes target the different mechanoreceptors of human skin, of which the main characteristics and response typologies are summarized in Table 2 (note that all contribute to guarantee stable precision grasp and manipulation [37,38])-for an exhaustive description of mechanoreceptor characteristics, the reader can refer to references [37][38][39][40].…”

Development and experimental validation of a minimalistic shape-changing haptic navigation device

“…Aside from haptics, many wearable navigation assistance devices have been proposed for VI individuals (reviews of which may be found in [7] [29]). These can resemble instrumented and actuated jackets, corsets and motorbike helmets.…”