I-Corps: Wearable Soft Robotic Glove for Hand Assistance and Rehabilitation

I-Corps：用于手部辅助和康复的可穿戴软机器人手套

• 批准号: 2132714
• 负责人: Wenlong Zhang
• 金额: $ 5万
• 依托单位: Arizona State University
• 依托单位国家: 美国
• 项目类别: Standard Grant
• 财政年份: 2021
• 资助国家: 美国
• 起止时间: 2021-06-01 至 2024-05-31
• 项目状态: 已结题
• 来源: https://www.nsf.gov/awardsearch/showAward?AWD_ID=2132714&HistoricalAwards=false
• 关键词: Corps; Wearable; Soft; Robotic; Glove

The broader impact/commercial potential of this I-Corps project is the development of a soft robotic glove for hand rehabilitation and assistance for recovering stroke patients. Currently, there are over seven million stroke survivors in the US and two-thirds of them experience loss of hand functions. Physical therapy is essential to restore the use of their hand/finger(s), but it may not be affordable or accessible for many stroke patients. The goal of the proposed wearable soft robotic glove is to enable safe, low-cost, customizable, and dexterous hand assistance in daily tasks, making it easy to use outside clinics. This technology has the potential to change how rehabilitation is administered to patients by enabling therapeutic exercises to be done anytime and anywhere, making rehabilitation more convenient for patients, reducing the workload of physical therapists, and lowering the overall cost of healthcare. The proposed technology can also be used to rehabilitate impaired users with various types of neurological diseases, or assist healthy users to prevent injuries and improve task performance.This I-Corps project is based on the development of novel, fabric-reinforced, textile actuators. These actuators are pneumatically driven and can be fabricated using lamination and sewing for fast prototyping and mass production. These actuators exploit unique capabilities including: zero initial stiffness, full collapsibility, high power-to-weight ratio, puncture resistance, and high stretchability. The actuators can perform the functions of bending, twisting, contraction, elongation, as well as combinations of these motion profiles to support versatile hand activities. Computational models are developed based on the finite element method and experimentally validated to predict the kinematic and force/torque outputs of the actuators. The predictions allow for design optimization and customization. The users' intents are estimated online using measurements from the onboard soft stretch sensors, which allows volitional control of each soft actuator to support the hand motions. Multiple prototypes of soft robotic gloves have been fabricated. Preliminary results have shown that: 1) users can easily don and doff the gloves by themselves, 2) actuators can be precisely aligned to the human fingers, and 3) the assistive torque can be dynamically adjusted by controlling the pressure inside the actuator.This award reflects NSF's statutory mission and has been deemed worthy of support through evaluation using the Foundation's intellectual merit and broader impacts review criteria.

这个I-Corps项目更广泛的影响/商业潜力是开发一种用于手部康复和帮助中风患者康复的软机器人手套。目前，美国有超过700万中风幸存者，其中三分之二的人失去了手部功能。物理治疗对于恢复他们的手/手指的使用至关重要，但对于许多中风患者来说可能负担不起或无法获得。提出的可穿戴软机器人手套的目标是在日常任务中实现安全，低成本，可定制和灵巧的手部辅助，使其易于在诊所外使用。这项技术有可能改变患者的康复管理方式，使治疗练习可以随时随地进行，使患者康复更方便，减少物理治疗师的工作量，降低医疗保健的整体成本。拟议的技术还可用于康复患有各种类型神经系统疾病的受损用户，或帮助健康用户防止受伤并提高任务绩效。该I-Corps项目基于新型织物增强纺织致动器的开发。这些致动器是电驱动的，可以使用层压和缝纫进行快速原型制作和大规模生产。这些致动器利用独特的能力，包括：零初始刚度，完全可伸缩性，高功率重量比，耐穿刺性和高拉伸性。致动器可以执行弯曲、扭转、收缩、伸长以及这些运动轮廓的组合的功能，以支持多功能的手部活动。计算模型的基础上开发的有限元方法和实验验证，以预测的运动和力/扭矩输出的致动器。 预测允许设计优化和定制。使用者的意图是使用来自板载软拉伸传感器的测量值在线估计的，这允许对每个软致动器进行意志控制以支持手部运动。已经制造了多个软机器人手套原型。初步结果表明：1）使用者可以自己轻松地戴上和戴上手套; 2）执行器可以精确地对准人类手指; 3）可以通过控制执行器内部的压力来动态调整辅助扭矩。该奖项反映了NSF的法定使命，并通过使用基金会的智力价值和更广泛的影响审查标准进行评估，被认为值得支持。