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Author Spotlight: Enhancing Grasping Abilities for Hemiplegic Patients with Flexible Robotic Limbs
Published on: October 27, 2023
Fabric muscle with a cooling acceleration structure for upper limb assistance soft exosuits
Seong Jun Park1,2, Kyungjun Choi1,3, Hugo Rodrigue4
1Department of Robotics and Mechatronics, Korea Institute of Machinery and Materials, Daejeon, 34103, Korea.
Researchers developed a novel fan-integrated fabric muscle (FCFM) for soft exosuits. This innovation significantly speeds up the actuation of shape memory alloy (SMA) springs, enhancing wearable assistive devices.
Area of Science:
- Materials Science
- Robotics
- Biomedical Engineering
Background:
- Soft exosuits require lightweight, wearable components for muscle strength support.
- Shape memory alloy (SMA) spring-based fabric muscles (SFMs) offer flexibility but suffer from slow actuation due to slow SMA cooling rates.
Purpose of the Study:
- To enhance the actuation speed of SFMs for practical application in soft exosuits.
- To introduce a forced air-cooling fan-integrated fabric muscle (FCFM) to accelerate SMA spring cooling.
Main Methods:
- Integrated thin-diameter SMA springs with a high surface-area-to-volume ratio into a breathable fabric.
- Incorporated small fans for forced air-cooling of the SMA springs.
- Tested FCFM performance with a 4 kg weight and in an upper limb assistive soft exosuit prototype.
Main Results:
- Reduced FCFM relaxation time by over 70.2% using forced-air cooling.
- Demonstrated repeated actuation cycles with a significant load (4 kg).
- Improved arm extension time by 4.5 times in a soft exosuit prototype.
Conclusions:
- The FCFM significantly improves SMA cooling rates and actuation speed.
- The proposed FCFM shows strong potential for enhancing the performance of soft exosuits for muscle assistance.
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