A Smart, Textile-Driven, Soft Exosuit for Spinal Assistance

Work-related musculoskeletal disorders (WMSDs) are often caused by repetitive lifting, making them a significant concern in occupational health. Although wearable assist devices have become the norm for mitigating the risk of back pain, most spinal assist devices still possess a partially rigid structure that impacts the user's comfort and flexibility. This paper addresses this issue by presenting a smart textile-actuated spine assistance robotic exosuit (SARE), which can conform to the back seamlessly without impeding the user's movement and is incredibly lightweight. To detect strain on the spine and to control the smart textile automatically, a soft knitting sensor that utilizes fluid pressure as a sensing element is used. Based on the soft knitting hydraulic sensor, the robotic exosuit can also feature the ability of monitoring and rectifying human posture. The SARE is validated experimentally with human subjects (N = 4). Through wearing the SARE in stoop lifting, the peak electromyography (EMG) signals of the lumbar erector spinae are reduced by 22.8% ± 12 for lifting 5 kg weights and 27.1% ± 14 in empty-handed conditions. Moreover, the integrated EMG decreased by 34.7% ± 11.8 for lifting 5 kg weights and 36% ± 13.3 in empty-handed conditions. In summary, the artificial muscle wearable device represents an anatomical solution to reduce the risk of muscle strain, metabolic energy cost and back pain associated with repetitive lifting tasks.

A Wearable Soft Robotic Exoskeleton for Hip Flexion Rehabilitation

Leg motion is essential to everyday tasks, yet many face a daily struggle due to leg motion impairment. Traditional robotic solutions for lower limb rehabilitation have arisen, but they may bare some limitations due to their cost. Soft robotics utilizes soft, pliable materials which may afford a less costly robotic solution. This work presents a soft-pneumatic-actuator-driven exoskeleton for hip flexion rehabilitation. An array of soft pneumatic rotary actuators is used for torque generation. An analytical model of the actuators is validated and used to determine actuator parameters for the target application of hip flexion. The performance of the assembly is assessed, and it is found capable of the target torque for hip flexion, 19.8 Nm at 30°, requiring 86 kPa to reach that torque output. The assembly exhibits a maximum torque of 31 Nm under the conditions tested. The full exoskeleton assembly is then assessed with healthy human subjects as they perform a set of lower limb motions. For one motion, the Leg Raise, a muscle signal reduction of 43.5% is observed during device assistance, as compared to not wearing the device. This reduction in muscle effort indicates that the device is effective in providing hip flexion assistance and suggests that pneumatic-rotary-actuator-driven exoskeletons are a viable solution to realize more accessible options for those who suffer from lower limb immobility.

Relationship Between Muscular Activity and Assistance Magnitude for a Myoelectric Model Based Controlled Exosuit

The growing field of soft wearable exosuits, is gradually gaining terrain and proposing new complementary solutions in assistive technology, with several advantages in terms of portability, kinematic transparency, ergonomics, and metabolic efficiency. Those are palatable benefits that can be exploited in several applications, ranging from strength and resistance augmentation in industrial scenarios, to assistance or rehabilitation for people with motor impairments. To be effective, however, an exosuit needs to synergistically work with the human and matching specific requirements in terms of both movements kinematics and dynamics: an accurate and timely intention-detection strategy is the paramount aspect which assume a fundamental importance for acceptance and usability of such technology. We previously proposed to tackle this challenge by means of a model-based myoelectric controller, treating the exosuit as an external muscular layer in parallel to the human biomechanics and as such, controlled by the same efferent motor commands of biological muscles. However, previous studies that used classical control methods, demonstrated that the level of device's intervention and effectiveness of task completion are not linearly related: therefore, using a newly implemented EMG-driven controller, we isolated and characterized the relationship between assistance magnitude and muscular benefits, with the goal to find a range of assistance which could make the controller versatile for both dynamic and static tasks. Ten healthy participants performed the experiment resembling functional daily activities living in separate assistance conditions: without the device's active support and with different levels of intervention by the exosuit. Higher assistance levels resulted in larger reductions in the activity of the muscles augmented by the suit actuation and a good performance in motion accuracy, despite involving a decrease of the movement velocities, with respect to the no assistance condition. Moreover, increasing torque magnitude by the exosuit resulted in a significant reduction in the biological torque at the elbow joint and in a progressive effective delay in the onset of muscular fatigue. Thus, contrarily to classical force and proportional myoelectric schemes, the implementation of an opportunely tailored EMG-driven model based controller affords to naturally match user's intention detection and provide an assistance level working symbiotically with the human biomechanics.

Design and Validation of a Modular One-To-Many Actuator for a Soft Wearable Exosuit

The size, weight, and power consumption of soft wearable robots rapidly scale with their number of active degrees of freedom. While various underactuation strategies have been proposed, most of them impose hard constrains on the kinetics and kinematics of the device. Here we propose a paradigm to independently control multiple degrees of freedom using a set of modular components, all tapping power from a single motor. Each module consists of three electromagnetic clutches, controlled to convert a constant unidirectional motion in an arbitrary output trajectory. We detail the design and functioning principle of each module and propose an approach to control the velocity and position of its output. The device is characterized in free space and under loading conditions. Finally, we test the performance of the proposed actuation scheme to drive a soft exosuit for the elbow joint, comparing it with the performance obtained using a traditional DC motor and an unpowered-exosuit condition. The exosuit powered by our novel scheme reduces the biological torque required to move by an average of 46.2%, compared to the unpowered condition, but negatively affects movement smoothness. When compared to a DC motor, using the our paradigm slightly deteriorates performance. Despite the technical limitations of the current design, the method proposed in this paper is a promising way to design more portable wearable robots.

A Soft-Inflatable Exosuit for Knee Rehabilitation: Assisting Swing Phase During Walking

In this paper, we present a soft-inflatable exosuit to assist knee extension during gait training for stroke rehabilitation. The soft exosuit is designed to provide 25% of the knee moment required during the swing phase of the gait cycle and is integrated with inertial measurement units (IMUs) and smart shoe insole sensors to improve gait phase detection and controller design. The stiffness of the knee joint during level walking is computed using inverse dynamics. The soft-inflatable actuators, with an I cross-section, are mechanically characterized at varying angles to enable generation of the required stiffness outputs. A linear relation between the inflatable actuator stiffness and internal pressure as a function of the knee angle is obtained, and a two-layer stiffness controller is implemented to assist the knee joint by providing appropriate stiffness during the swing phase. Finally, to evaluate the ability of the exosuit to assist in swing motion, surface-electromyography (sEMG) sensors are placed on the three muscle groups of the quadriceps and two groups of the hamstrings, on three healthy participants. A reduction in muscle activity of the rectus femoris, vastus lateralis, and vastus medialis is observed, which demonstrates feasibility of operation and potential future usage of the soft inflatable exosuit by impaired users.