Textile-Based Wearable Soft Robotics with Integrated Sensing, Actuating and Self Powering Properties

Introduction

Wearable soft robotic devices for rehabilitation and motion assistance have emerged in the past decade as promising robotic systems owing to their adaptable morphologies. Soft robotics allow safer human-robot interactions, as opposed to rigid exoskeletons made of metals.

Material Solutions

Elastomers and textiles have become attractive low-cost and flexible material solutions to build wearable soft robots. Despite their high potential, the demonstrated solutions of previous studies are bulky, unreliable, non-scalable, and have limited portability and mobility.

Challenges

All those drawbacks do not allow practical applications of soft robotic devices for at-home assistance and rehabilitation during activities of daily living, where they are intended and most needed.

Project Objective

The core objective of TEXWEAROTS is to develop untethered knitted soft robotic assistive devices to overcome current drawbacks related to the wearable soft-robotic system reliability, mobility, sustainability, and integration.

Device Development

TEXWEAROTS focuses on the development of a knitted robotic glove free from bulky components with seamlessly integrated actuation, sensing, and self-powering functionalities.

Manufacturing Approach

With my solid experience in textile manufacturing, soft sensors, and soft robotics, I will leverage the latest advances in digital machine knitting to manufacture 3D actuator shells with the integrated functionalities in a monolithic manner. This will lead to garment-like customizable textile-based robotic devices which are highly scalable and reliable.

Actuation Mechanism

Furthermore, I will enable a thermally powered fluidic actuation mechanism through the integration of soft Peltier cooling functionality, which enhances the actuator response time needed for motion assistance applications.

Interdisciplinary Collaboration

TEXWEAROTS combines textile and material science, physiotherapy, robotics, electronics, and biomedical engineering. The proposed novel technologies and manufacturing techniques of the glove will lead to a breakthrough in wearable soft robotics and wearable electronics at wide.