Textile Technology for Soft Robotic and Autonomous Garments

Abstract

Textiles have emerged as a promising class of materials for developing wearable robots that move and feel like everyday clothing. Textiles represent a favorable material platform for wearable robots due to their flexibility, low weight, breathability, and soft hand‐feel. Textiles also offer a unique level of programmability because of their inherent hierarchical nature, enabling researchers to modify and tune properties at several interdependent material scales. With these advantages and capabilities in mind, roboticists have begun to use textiles, not simply as substrates, but as functional components that program actuation and sensing. In parallel, materials scientists are developing new materials that respond to thermal, electrical, and hygroscopic stimuli by leveraging textile structures for function. Although textiles are one of humankind's oldest technologies, materials scientists and roboticists are just beginning to tap into their potential. This review provides a textile‐centric survey of the current state of the art in wearable robotic garments and highlights metrics that will guide materials development. Recent advances in textile materials for robotic components (i.e., as sensors, actuators, and integration components) are described with a focus on how these materials and technologies set the stage for wearable robots programmed at the material level.

A Wearable Soft Fabric Sleeve for Upper Limb Augmentation

“…Because there is a linear relation between the contraction force and the SA elongation, these results demonstrate that our developed hysteresis model is well suited for force control. This will be the subject of the future works with applications in soft wearable devices such as flexible surgical robotics or smart garments [66,67].…”

Challenges and solutions for application and wider adoption of wearable robots

“…Such soft sensors will probably never entirely replace rigid sensors (since soft technologies are not needed in all applications), but are likely to be a major aspect of the next generation of wearable robotics. One limitation they currently face is that the soft sensors generally still need to be connected to "hard" electronics, though such electronic components will likely become more integrated into soft materials over the next few years as well (Sanchez et al, 2021).The weakness of sensors built into the robot is that they only obtain knowledge about wearer body parts that are attached to the wearable robot and that they require the wearer to either already move the robot (in the case of position sensors) or apply forces to the robot (in the case of force sensors) before the robot can react, reducing its assistive benefits. The latter weakness can be reduced by reducing the amount of wearer force/movement required to trigger robotic assistance, but this may cause false positives (Novak and Riener, 2015;Tucker et al, 2015).…”

Review on Control Strategies for Lower Limb Rehabilitation Exoskeletons

“…Soft exo-suit and rigid exoskeleton are two important types of assistive robot. The former is promising to achieve comfortable, light-weighted, and backdrivable assistance [29], [30]. While the latter can offer greater assistive torque, offload the body weight and output torque to the ground, and thus suits patients with more severe lower limb impairments [31].…”