I-Corps: Fiber-Reinforced Elasto-Fluidic Systems

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Orthosis devices (to correct disorders of limbs or spine) currently being provided to patients are very unappealing. The devices are heavy, large mechanisms that are excessively restrictive of motion, painful, dangerous, and slow to provide results. This I-Corps team has developed fiber-reinforced elasto-fluidics orthosis devices that are lightweight, low cost, soft, and safe for human interaction. The fiber-reinforced elasto-fluidic systems are soft mechanical devices that act much like the arm of an octopus. The device can be made small enough to maintain a low profile while generating sufficient corrective force. The proposed technology also enables the remaining degrees of freedom of the body to be unrestricted. This technology provides the opportunity to develop a wide range of applications that provide solutions to existing problems, novel applications, and enhancements to existing designs.This project focuses on the development of fiber-reinforced elasto-fluidic technology for applications and markets that it can benefit. The fiber-reinforced elasto-fluidic systems combine the high strain energy utilization and flexibility of fibers, the versatility and compressive load abilities of fluids, and the continuum nature of soft materials, exploiting the best features of each. These properties and others combine to make elasto-fluidic systems without contact friction and losses, free of joint backlash, scalable in size, safe for human interaction, resilient to impact, adaptable to external forces and constraints, low cost, and high in power density. These systems have a wide range of forces and motions, are able to be combined in parallel, form complex shapes, and eliminate the need for subsequent mechanisms for geometric or mechanical advantage. The elasto-fluidic technology developed at the University of Michigan converts fluid pressure into a wide range of forces and three-dimensional kinematic motions well beyond the scope of existing pneumatic muscles.