Wearable robots are undergoing a disruptive transition, from the rigid machines that populated the science-fiction world in the early eighties to lightweight robotic apparel, hardly distinguishable from our daily clothes. In less than a decade of development, soft robotic suits have achieved important results in human motor assistance and augmentation. In this paper, we start by giving a definition of soft robotic suits and proposing a taxonomy to classify existing systems. We then critically review the modes of actuation, the physical human-robot interface and the intention-detection strategies of state of the art soft robotic suits, highlighting the advantages and limitations of different approaches. Finally, we discuss the impact of this new technology on human movements, for both augmenting human function and supporting motor impairments, and identify areas that are in need of further development.
In the field of rehabilitation robotics, transparent, precise and intuitive control of hand exoskeletons still represents a substantial challenge. In particular, the use of compliant systems often leads to a trade-off between lightness and material flexibility, and control precision. In this paper, we present a compliant, actuated glove with a control scheme to detect the user's motion intent, which is estimated by a machine learning algorithm based on muscle activity. Six healthy study participants used the glove in three assistance conditions during a force reaching task. The results suggest that active assistance from the glove can aid the user, reducing the muscular activity needed to attain a medium-high grasp force, and that closedloop control of a compliant assistive glove can successfully be implemented by means of a machine learning algorithm.
Bi2Sr2CaCu2Ox (Bi-2212) conductor is the only high temperature superconductor manufactured as a round wire and is a very promising conductor for very high field applications. One of the key design parameters of Bi-2212 wire is its filament size, which has been previously reported to affect the critical current density (Jc) and ac losses. Work with 1 bar heat treatment showed that the optimal filament diameter was about 15 μm but it was not well understood at that time that gas bubbles were the main current limiting mechanism. Here we investigated a recent Bi-2212 wire with a 121×18 filament architecture with varying wire diameter (1.0 to 1.5 mm) using 50 bar overpressure processing. This wire is part of a 1.2 km piece length of 1.0 mm diameter made by Oxford Superconducting Technology. We found that Jc is independent of the filament size in the range from 9 to 14 μm, although the n value increased with increasing filament size. A new record Jc (4.2 K, 15 T) of 4200 A/mm2 and JE (4.2 K, 15 T) of 830 A/mm2 were achieved.
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