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

人体皮肤在运动过程中拉伸和压缩。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非常必要的，例如带有嵌入式电极或假肢插座的纺织品。然而，准确预测这些皮肤变形目前是不可能的。U-WEAR（“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”）旨在开发一个用户特定的测量平台，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。该项目是在ERC Synergy Grant Natural BionicS下进行的研究的延伸，旨在控制和感知软机器人假肢。假肢要真正成为佩戴者的自然延伸，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将通过开发一种经济、快速、准确的基于运动捕捉的平台，以及基于机器学习的动力学建模，实现运动过程中皮肤变形的物理/数学分析，来解决假肢以及其他几种可穿戴机器人（如软外骨骼）的这一差距。U-WEAR将提供特定主题的皮肤生物力学定量理解，以及肢体运动过程中肢体表面和体积的变化。该框架的成功实现将为从可穿戴机器人到重建手术中的皮瓣规划以及服装和鞋类等应用提供机会。开发的技术将由一个附属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公司的市场。

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.