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

I-Corps项目更广泛的影响/商业潜力是开发用于手部康复和帮助中风患者康复的柔软机器人手套。目前，美国有700多万中风幸存者，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/手指的使用是必不可少的，但对于许多中风患者来说，它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对患者进行康复治疗的方式，使治疗练习可以随时随地进行，使患者更方便地进行康复，减少物理治疗师的工作量，降低医疗保健的总体成本。所提出的技术还可用于康复患有各种神经系统疾病的受损用户，或帮助健康用户预防受伤和改善任务表现。这个I-Corps项目是基于开发新颖的、织物增强的、纺织致动器。这些执行器是气动驱动的，可以使用层压和缝纫制造快速原型和批量生产。这些致动器具有独特的性能，包括：零初始刚度、完全可折叠性、高功率重量比、抗穿刺性和高拉伸性。执行器可以执行弯曲，扭曲，收缩，伸长的功能，以及这些运动轮廓的组合，以支持多功能的手部活动。基于有限元方法建立了计算模型，并进行了实验验证，以预测执行器的运动和力/扭矩输出。预测允许设计优化和定制。使用机载软拉伸传感器的测量值在线估计用户的意图，这允许每个软执行器的意志控制来支持手部运动。已经制造了多个柔软机器人手套的原型。初步结果表明：1)用户可以方便地自行脱下手套；2)执行器可以精确对准人的手指；3)通过控制执行器内部的压力可以动态调节辅助扭矩。该奖项反映了美国国家科学基金会的法定使命，并通过使用基金会的知识价值和更广泛的影响审查标准进行评估，被认为值得支持。

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.