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Active Fabrics With Controllable Stiffness for Robotic Assistive Interfaces.

Xudong Yang1, Yu Chen1, Tianyu Chen1

  • 1School of Mechanical and Aerospace Engineering, Nanyang Technological University, Singapore, 639798, Singapore.

Advanced Materials (Deerfield Beach, Fla.)
|June 1, 2024
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Summary

Researchers developed novel active assistive fabrics that rapidly change stiffness for better human-robot collaboration. These adaptable fabrics offer improved shape conformity and reduced volume for applications like exosuits and body armor.

Keywords:
architectured materialsassistive devicesexosuitsfabricssoft robots

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Area of Science:

  • Materials Science
  • Robotics
  • Biomechanics

Background:

  • Traditional rigid assistive devices have limitations in adaptability.
  • Existing conformable fabrics face challenges with complex body contours, large actuated volumes, and slow response times.
  • Biological organisms offer inspiration for combining hard and soft phases.

Purpose of the Study:

  • To propose a new design for active assistive fabrics overcoming limitations of current technologies.
  • To demonstrate the shape adaptivity and controllable stiffness of the proposed fabric.
  • To explore diverse applications of these advanced fabrics.

Main Methods:

  • Architectured rigid tiles interconnected with flexible actuated fibers were designed.
  • Programmable tessellation of body shapes into tiles and control of fiber interactions were employed.
  • The fabrics' transition between soft and rigid states and stiffness change (>350x) were analyzed.

Main Results:

  • The active fabrics demonstrated rapid transitions between compliant and rigid states, conforming to complex body shapes.
  • Device volume after actuation was minimized.
  • Successful demonstrations included exosuits for tremor suppression and lifting assistance, and body armor for impact mitigation.

Conclusions:

  • A practical framework for designing customizable active fabrics with shape adaptivity and controllable stiffness was established.
  • The proposed active fabrics are suitable for wearable exosuits, haptic devices, and medical rehabilitation.
  • Integration with electrothermal actuators enabled smart actuation and convenient folding capabilities.