A portable skin deformation measurement platform for user-specific wearable interface design (U-WEAR)

人的皮肤在运动过程中会伸展和压缩。了解皮肤变形作为肢体运动学的函数对于可穿戴系统的大规模部署是严格必要的，例如具有嵌入电极或假体插座的纺织品。然而，准确预测这些蒙皮变形目前是不可能的。U-Wear(“一个针对用户特定可穿戴界面设计的便携式皮肤变形测量平台”)旨在开发一个针对用户的测量平台，为设计与皮肤的生物力学无缝接口提供信息，使其成为佩戴者的自然延伸。该项目是ERC Synergy Grant自然仿生学研究的延伸，旨在控制和感知软机器人假肢。假肢真正成为佩戴者的自然延伸的关键是佩戴者和仿生系统之间的接口，即假肢插座。该接口的设计对仿生肢体的可接受性和有效性至关重要。U-Wear将解决假肢以及其他几个可穿戴机器人(如软外骨骼)中的这一差距，方法是开发一个基于运动捕捉的、具有基于机器学习的动力学建模的负担得起、快速和准确的平台，从而能够对运动过程中的皮肤变形进行物理/数学分析。U-Ware将提供特定于受试者的皮肤生物力学的定量了解，以及肢体运动过程中肢体表面和体积的变化。这一框架的成功实现将在从可穿戴机器人到重建手术中的皮片规划以及服装和鞋类的各种应用中打开机会。开发的技术将由一家衍生公司转化为市场产品，该公司将分三个阶段逐步面向科学研究界和大型企业的市场。

Human skin stretches and compresses during movements. Knowing the skin deformation as a function of limb kinematics is strictly necessary for the large-scale deployment of wearable systems, such as textiles with embedded electrodes or sockets for prostheses. However, predicting these skin deformations accurately is currently not possible. U-WEAR ("A portable skin deformation measurement platform for user-specific wearable interface design") aims to develop a user-specific measurement platform to inform the design of biomechanically seamless interfaces with the skin that become a natural extension of the wearer. The project has been developed as an extension to the research conducted under the ERC Synergy Grant Natural BionicS that aims to control and sense soft-robotic prosthetic limbs. Crucial for prostheses to truly become a natural extension of the wearer is the interface between the wearer and the bionic system, i.e. the prosthetic socket. The design of this interface is critical for the acceptability and efficacy of bionic limbs. U-WEAR will address this gap in prosthetics, as well as in several other wearable robots such as soft exoskeletons, by developing an affordable, fast and accurate motion capture-based platform with machine-learning-based dynamics modelling, enabling physics/mathematics analyses of skin deformation during movement. U-WEAR will provide a subject-specific quantitative understanding of skin biomechanics, and how limb surface and volume change during limb movements. The successful realisation of this framework will open opportunities in applications ranging from wearable robots to skin flaps planning in reconstructive surgery, and clothing and footwear. The developed technology will be translated into a market product by a spin-off company which will progressively, in three stages, address the markets of the scientific research community and of large corporates.