Creativity@Home: REHABILITATIVE ELEGANT LOCOMOTION WITH EXOSKELETON AND ACTIVE SUPPORT FOR EXERCISE (RELEASE)

RELEASE旨在探索制造外骨骼的可能性，以支持有运动困难的人行走，其驱动野心是使技术不被偶然的观察者所看到，但为最终用户解放了能够行走的“基本”问题。该项目将首先聚集来自不同研究领域的研究人员——骨科、神经科学、机械工程、纳米技术、可及性——并培养他们对人们每天面临的挑战的集体认识，这些人的主要活动手段目前是由行走框架、手杖、拐杖或轮椅等重大支持提供的。这将通过将研究人员与目前正在经历这些挑战并能够传达这些挑战对其生活质量的影响的人聚集在一起，在研讨会活动中围绕创造力刺激技术的使用，包括ARG在其最初C@H会议期间学习的一些技术。本次研讨会将确定(1)该技术潜在最终用户的生活质量需求，(2)不同研究领域的研究人员面临的综合挑战的性质，(3)可能需要纳入团队的潜在其他研究领域，以及(4)RELEASE项目其余部分的总体战略。在这次研讨会之后，PI将为不同的研究团队设定任务，并将其带回RELEASE团队，以便在第二次集体会议中共同讨论挑战的细节，以确定如何取得进展。第二次集体会议将在第一次研讨会后大约一个月举行。随后将在项目的12个月里举行一系列进一步的集体会议，其中PI将提出挑战，团队将给出回应，以便团队共同努力开发技术可行性的总体观点。当挑战需要研究人员打开他们正常的创意渠道时，我们将利用创意促进者来帮助开辟进一步确定如何解决问题的方法。随着技术挑战变得更加明显和详细，该团队将开始为更实质性的研究提出建议，以探索解决首要目标的方法。在12个月期间即将结束时，合作会议将转向制定这些建议，以便能够确保未来的资金。最终用户群体将参与所有的协作会议，特别是在考虑未来工作以确保维持改善其生活质量的最终目标时。一旦团队开始合作，我们将了解这些挑战的详细性质，但作为本提案的例证，设想我们将需要确定特定的终端用户生活质量需求，并将这些需求作为技术发展的挑战，将当前关于行走生物力学的知识转化为一种可以“传达”到支持性外骨骼型技术的形式，探索开发的可能性：一种可以根据指令而变硬的材料，一种控制这种材料的变硬的方法，这样它就可以用来支持生物力学问题所理解的运动，一种使这种材料透气的方法，这样它就可以穿着舒适，以及一种合适的能量系统，使上述所有的目标都能实现。我们预计，这些都是巨大的挑战，由生活质量的要求驱动，这将需要进一步的实质性研究；RELEASE是关于阐明这些实质性研究需要回答的问题，以便实现这种可能性。

RELEASE is intended to explore the possibility of making an exoskeleton to support walking by people with locomotory difficulties with a driving ambition to make the technology invisible to casual observers yet liberating for the end user beyond the 'basic' issue of being able to walk. The project will start by gathering researchers from a variety of research fields - orthopaedics, neuroscience, mechanical engineering, nano technology, accessibility - and developing their collective appreciation of the challenges faced daily by people whose main means of locomotion is currently provided by substantial support such as walking frames, sticks, crutches or a wheelchair. This will be done by bringing the researchers together with people who currently experience these challenges and who can convey the impacts of these challenges on their quality of life, in a seminar activity based around the use of creativity-stimulation techniques including some of those learnt by ARG during its original C@H sessions. This seminar will determine (1) the quality of life desires of the potential end users of the technology, (2) the nature of the combined challenges for the researchers in the different researtch areas, (3) potential other research areas that might need to be incorporated in the team and (4) the overarching strategy for the rest of the RELEASE project.After this seminar, the PI will set tasks for the different research teams to bring back to the RELEASE team so that in the second collective session the details of the challenges can be discussed together in order to establish how progress might be made. The second collective session will take place about one month after the initial seminar. This will be followed by a sequence of further collective sessions over the 12 months of the project, in which challenges will be posed by the PI and responses brought back by the teams so that the overarching view of the feasibility of the technology can be developed by the team working together. Where the challenges need the researchers to unblock their normal creative channels, we will make use of a creativity facilitator to help open up further ways of ascertaining how to approach the problem. As the technical challenges become more apparent and detailed, the team will start to develop propsoals for more substantive research to explore ways in which the over-riding aim could be addressed. Towards the end of the 12 month period the collaborative sessions will turn to the development of these proposals so that future funding can be secured. End user groups will be involved in all of the collaborative sessions, especially where future work is being considered in order to ensure that the end aim of improving their quality of life is maintained.We will know the detailed nature of these challenges once the teams start working together, but as an illustration for this proposal, it is envisaged that we will need to determine the particular end user quality of life needs and setting these as the challenge to the technological developments, to convert current knowledge about biomechanics of walking into a form that could be 'conveyed' to a supportive exoskeleton-type technology, to explore the possibility of developing: a material that could be stiffened in response to a command, a means of controlling that stiffening across an expanse of that material so that it could be used to support movement as understood by the biomechanics issues, a means of making this material breathable so that it could be comfortable to wear, and a suitable energy system to enable all of the above to be achieved. We anticipate that these are great challenges, driven by the quality of life requirement, which will need further substantive research; RELEASE is about elucidating the questions that such substantive research will need to answer in order for such a possibility to be realised.