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Updated: May 25, 2026

Adjustable Stiffness, External Fixator for the Rat Femur Osteotomy and Segmental Bone Defect Models
Published on: October 9, 2014
Variable Stiffness Structure for limb attachment
Maxime Bureau1, Thierry Keller, Joel Perry
1Health Division – Health Technologies Unit, Tecnalia Research and Innovation, Paseo Mikeletegi 1, 20009 Donostia-San Sebastián, Spain.
Abstract:
In robotic rehabilitation, the way of attaching the robotic device to the users' limb constitutes a crucial element of product quality, particularly for assuring good fitting, comfort, accuracy, usability, and safety. In this article, we present a new technological concept - 'Variable Stiffness Structure' - allowing for an improvement of these aspects in the 'robotic device to limb' - connection by offering a compound of materials that are together able to switch from a flexible textile-like state to a more rigid state by applying negative pressure. The paper describes the concept and the basic behaviour of the material, based on experiments.
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