Soft Rehabilitation and Nursing-Care Robots: A Review and Future Outlook

Peng, Zengqi; Huang, Jian

doi:10.3390/app9153102

Cited by 35 publications

(19 citation statements)

References 110 publications

(155 reference statements)

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“…In recent years, soft robotics gained popularity among researchers due to merits in compliance and safe human-robot interaction. In particular, in the development of wearable rehabilitation robots, soft robotics have provided new solutions ( Peng and Huang, 2019 ; Thalman and Artemiadis, 2020 ). Unlike the conventional devices that use electric motors and rigid linkages to constrain and guide the motions of the human joints, the soft wearables utilize soft actuators associated with flexible materials to repetitively move the joints, thus obtaining the effectiveness of rehabilitation.…”

Section: Introductionmentioning

confidence: 99%

“…Unlike the conventional devices that use electric motors and rigid linkages to constrain and guide the motions of the human joints, the soft wearables utilize soft actuators associated with flexible materials to repetitively move the joints, thus obtaining the effectiveness of rehabilitation. The inherent compliance of the soft robots enhances the wearing comfort, while achieving low profile, light weight, and low cost ( Peng and Huang, 2019 ). The advantages of soft robotic wearable devices have paved the road for a broad application toward at-home rehabilitation ( Polygerinos et al, 2015 ).…”

Section: Introductionmentioning

confidence: 99%

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A Compact Soft Robotic Wrist Brace With Origami Actuators

et al. 2021

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Wrist disability caused by a series of diseases or injuries hinders the patient’s capability to perform activities of daily living (ADL). Rehabilitation devices for the wrist motor function have gained popularity among clinics and researchers due to the convenience of self-rehabilitation. The inherent compliance of soft robots enabled safe human-robot interaction and light-weight characteristics, providing new possibilities to develop wearable devices. Compared with the conventional apparatus, soft robotic wearable rehabilitation devices showed advantages in flexibility, cost, and comfort. In this work, a compact and low-profile soft robotic wrist brace was proposed by directly integrating eight soft origami-patterned actuators on the commercially available wrist brace. The linear motion of the actuators was defined by their origami pattern. The extensions of the actuators were constrained by the brace fabrics, deriving the motions of the wrist joint, i.e., extension/flexion, ulnar/radial deviation. The soft actuators were made of ethylene-vinyl acetate by blow molding, achieving mass-production capability, low cost, and high repeatability. The design and fabrication of the soft robotic wrist brace are presented in this work. The experiments on the range of motion, output force, wearing position adaptivity, and performance under disturbance have been carried out with results analyzed. The modular soft actuator approach of design and fabrication of the soft robotic wrist brace has a wide application potential in wearable devices.

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Section: Introductionmentioning

confidence: 99%

Section: Introductionmentioning

confidence: 99%

A Compact Soft Robotic Wrist Brace With Origami Actuators

et al. 2021

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“…In the search for lighter, more portable wearable robots, soft, frameless wearable robots that take advantage of the body's skeletal structure and joints have been developed by several groups. 5,6 This approach can apply assistance to a wearer's limb using remotely driven actuation modalities (thus enabling more optimal placement of heavy/rigid components on the body) and can achieve mechanical transparency when assistance is not required.…”

Section: Introductionmentioning

confidence: 99%

Unfolding Textile-Based Pneumatic Actuators for Wearable Applications

et al. 2022

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Textile based pneumatic actuators have recently seen increased development for use in wearable applications thanks to their high strength to weight ratio and range of achievable actuation modalities. However, the design of these textile-based actuators is typically an iterative process due to the complexity of predicting the soft and compliant behavior of the textiles. In this work we investigate the actuation mechanics of a range of physical prototypes of unfolding textile-based actuators to understand and develop an intuition for how the geometric parameters of the actuator affect the moment it generates, enabling more deterministic designs in the future. Under benchtop conditions the actuators were characterized at a range of actuator angles and pressures (0-136 kPa), and three distinct performance regimes were observed, which we define as Shearing, Creasing, and Flattening. During Flattening, the effects of both the length and radius of the actuator dominate with maximum moments in excess of 80 Nm being generated, while during Creasing the radius dominates with generated moments scaling with the cube of the radius. Low stiffness spring like behavior is observed in the Shearing regime, which occurs as the actuator approaches its unfolded angle. A piecewise analytical model was also developed and compared to the experimental results within each regime. Finally, a prototype actuator was also integrated into a shoulder assisting wearable robot, and on-body characterization of this robot was performed on five healthy individuals to observe the behavior of the actuators in a wearable application. Results from this characterization highlight that these actuators can generate useful on-body moments (10.74 Nm at 90°a ctuator angle) but that there are significant reductions compared to bench-top performance, in particular when mostly folded and at higher pressures.

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“…A personal computer with a Visual Basic program was used to control the glove to practice grasp-and-release motions. Therefore, soft exoskeletons have greater market prospects than rigid ones [ 13 , 14 ].…”

Section: Introductionmentioning

confidence: 99%

A Soft Exoskeleton Glove for Hand Bilateral Training via Surface EMG

Chen

Yang

Wen

2021

Sensors

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Traditional rigid exoskeletons can be challenging to the comfort of wearers and can have large pressure, which can even alter natural hand motion patterns. In this paper, we propose a low-cost soft exoskeleton glove (SExoG) system driven by surface electromyography (sEMG) signals from non-paretic hand for bilateral training. A customization method of geometrical parameters of soft actuators was presented, and their structure was redesigned. Then, the corresponding pressure values of air-pump to generate different angles of actuators were determined to support four hand motions (extension, rest, spherical grip, and fist). A two-step hybrid model combining the neural network and the state exclusion algorithm was proposed to recognize four hand motions via sEMG signals from the healthy limb. Four subjects were recruited to participate in the experiments. The experimental results show that the pressure values for the four hand motions were about −2, 0, 40, and 70 KPa, and the hybrid model can yield a mean accuracy of 98.7% across four hand motions. It can be concluded that the novel SExoG system can mirror the hand motions of non-paretic hand with good performance.

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Soft Rehabilitation and Nursing-Care Robots: A Review and Future Outlook

Cited by 35 publications

References 110 publications

A Compact Soft Robotic Wrist Brace With Origami Actuators

A Compact Soft Robotic Wrist Brace With Origami Actuators

Unfolding Textile-Based Pneumatic Actuators for Wearable Applications

A Soft Exoskeleton Glove for Hand Bilateral Training via Surface EMG

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