Collaborative Research: HCC: Small: Computational Design and Application of Wearable Haptic Knits

社交接触是人与人之间沟通的一种自然模式，更好地理解如何机械地传达社交接触将导致新的沟通形式和增强可穿戴设备的功能，从而改善人类健康和生活质量。随着我们通过电子邮件、短信和视频会议增加远程交流，社交接触的重要性变得越来越明显。先前的研究表明，社交接触可以通过可穿戴和手持设备复制，但目前的设备体积庞大，不切实际。这项研究将结合软机器人技术和不同刚度的针织纺织品的原理来设计和制造一种新型的柔软可穿戴触觉设备，在这种设备中，编织袖中的针脚尺寸、位置和材料的仔细规范将控制对佩戴者施加力的气动气囊的变形。项目成果将推进社会触觉和人类感知领域的知识，并将为各种其他类型的基于针织织物的设备（包括软辅助设备）奠定基础。通过实验室参观、拓展计划、指导来自工程中代表性不足的群体的学生，以及通过开源材料库将项目发现提供给广泛的受众，这些活动旨在扩大工程中代表性不足群体的参与，从而产生额外的广泛影响。目前的软性可穿戴设备体积庞大且不切实际，因为它们需要坚硬的框架来确保负载传输。另一方面，多材料和多针织物所提供的对材料性能的像素级控制，可以有效地将力传递重新定向到精确的变形模式，并且不引人注目。这个项目从三个方面着手设计、制造和测试针织可穿戴设备。第一个推力将建模和优化织物，通过使用实验材料表征和多尺度建模的组合来利用现代针织工艺的全部能力，以实现目标负载和变形剖面。第二个推力将设计、制造和测试可穿戴气动设备，包括考虑穿戴和脱布、执行器集成和接口以及设备特性。第三个重点将使用预先编程的触觉表情符号和实时显示远程操作的社交触摸队列的设备来实现和测试社交触摸线索。综上所述，这些重点将创造新的通信形式，并提高可穿戴设备的功能，从而改善人类健康和生活质量。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。

Social touch is a natural mode of communication between people and better understanding of how to convey social touch mechanistically will result in new forms of communication and increased capabilities of wearable devices that improve human health and quality of life. The importance of social touch is becoming more evident as we increase remote communication through email, text messages and videoconferencing. Prior work has shown that social touch can be replicated through wearable and holdable devices, but current devices are bulky and impractical. This research will combine principles of soft robotics and knit textiles of varying stiffness to design and fabricate a new kind of soft wearable haptic device, in which careful specification of stitch size, placement, and material in a knit sleeve will control the deformation of pneumatic bladders that apply force to the wearer. Project outcomes will advance knowledge in the field of social touch and human perception, and will lay the foundation for a variety of other types of knit-textile-based devices, including soft assistive devices. Additional broad impact will derive from activities designed to broaden participation of underrepresented groups in engineering through lab tours, outreach programs, and mentoring of students from groups that are underrepresented in engineering, and by making project findings available to a wide audience through an open-source materials library.Current soft wearable devices are bulky and impractical because they need stiff frames to ensure load transmission. The pixel-like control of material properties afforded by multi-material and multi-stitch knit textiles, on the other hand, can redirect force transmission to precise deformation modes efficiently and with a low profile. This project approaches designing, fabricating, and testing knit-enabled wearable devices in three thrusts. The first thrust will model and optimize knits to achieve target load and deformation profiles by using a combination of experimental material characterization and multiscale modeling to harness the full capabilities of the modern knitting process. The second thrust will design, fabricate, and test wearable pneumatic devices, including consideration for donning and doffing, actuator integration and interfacing, and device characterization. The third thrust will implement and test social touch cues using the device with pre-programmed haptic emojis and display of teleoperated social touch queues in real time. Taken together, these thrusts will create new forms of communication and lead to increased capabilities of wearable devices that improve human health and quality of life.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.