An artificial skeletal muscle for use in pediatric rehabilitation robotics

Behboodi, Ahad

doi:10.1016/b978-0-12-818538-4.00008-3

Cited by 3 publications

(4 citation statements)

References 114 publications

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“…After a thorough investigation of candidate soft actuators for pediatric rehabilitation robotics, we selected stacked dielectric elastomer actuators (DEAs) for configuring our artificial muscle, which are detailed in the following subsection [ 39 ]. Artificial muscle was the primary component that met our design criteria.…”

Section: Methodsmentioning

confidence: 99%

“…By stacking multiple layers of enhanced DEA, Kovacs et al [ 46 ] devised a highly adaptable actuator resembling human skeletal muscle. Being lightweight, compact, soft, and noiseless, and contracting longitudinally, stacked DEAs are strong artificial muscle candidates [ 39 ]. Specifically, stacked DEAs, composed of multiple layers of elastomer coated with compliant electrodes, contract longitudinally when voltage is applied ( Figure 3 B).…”

Section: Methodsmentioning

confidence: 99%

“…DE actuators are a group of muscle-like actuators (artificial muscles) that are lightweight, compact, soft, noiseless, and contract longitudinally. We call this device DE-AFO [ 35 ] ( Figure 1 ), a biomimetic exoskeleton that synchronizes the activation of its artificial muscles with those of the ankle by detecting different phases in gait to promote natural ankle motion. Our main hypothesis was that DEA-based artificial muscles in DE-AFO can generate meaningful assistive force in the sagittal plane to improve ankle movements in children with CP.…”

Section: Introductionmentioning

confidence: 99%

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DE-AFO: A Robotic Ankle Foot Orthosis for Children with Cerebral Palsy Powered by Dielectric Elastomer Artificial Muscle

Mohammadi,

Tajdani,

Masaei

et al. 2024

Sensors

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Conventional passive ankle foot orthoses (AFOs) have not seen substantial advances or functional improvements for decades, failing to meet the demands of many stakeholders, especially the pediatric population with neurological disorders. Our objective is to develop the first comfortable and unobtrusive powered AFO for children with cerebral palsy (CP), the DE-AFO. CP is the most diagnosed neuromotor disorder in the pediatric population. The standard of care for ankle control dysfunction associated with CP, however, is an unmechanized, bulky, and uncomfortable L-shaped conventional AFO. These passive orthoses constrain the ankle’s motion and often cause muscle disuse atrophy, skin damage, and adverse neural adaptations. While powered orthoses could enhance natural ankle motion, their reliance on bulky, noisy, and rigid actuators like DC motors limits their acceptability. Our innovation, the DE-AFO, emerged from insights gathered during customer discovery interviews with 185 stakeholders within the AFO ecosystem as part of the NSF I-Corps program. The DE-AFO is a biomimetic robot that employs artificial muscles made from an electro-active polymer called dielectric elastomers (DEs) to assist ankle movements in the sagittal planes. It incorporates a gait phase detection controller to synchronize the artificial muscles with natural gait cycles, mimicking the function of natural ankle muscles. This device is the first of its kind to utilize lightweight, compact, soft, and silent artificial muscles that contract longitudinally, addressing traditional actuated AFOs’ limitations by enhancing the orthosis’s natural feel, comfort, and acceptability. In this paper, we outline our design approach and describe the three main components of the DE-AFO: the artificial muscle technology, the finite state machine (the gait phase detection system), and its mechanical structure. To verify the feasibility of our design, we theoretically calculated if DE-AFO can provide the necessary ankle moment assistance for children with CP—aligning with moments observed in typically developing children. To this end, we calculated the ankle moment deficit in a child with CP when compared with the normative moment of seven typically developing children. Our results demonstrated that the DE-AFO can provide meaningful ankle moment assistance, providing up to 69% and 100% of the required assistive force during the pre-swing phase and swing period of gait, respectively.

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Section: Methodsmentioning

confidence: 99%

Section: Methodsmentioning

confidence: 99%

Section: Introductionmentioning

confidence: 99%

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DE-AFO: A Robotic Ankle Foot Orthosis for Children with Cerebral Palsy Powered by Dielectric Elastomer Artificial Muscle

Mohammadi,

Tajdani,

Masaei

et al. 2024

Sensors

Self Cite

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“…While those materials presented earlier have been utilized for SWRR, there are other materials that had been highlighted as a possible option in previous articles, [37,103] like IPMC, [104] hydraulically amplified self-healing electrostatic (HASEL), [103] and SMP [105] that present attractive properties as they have been used in similar applications (grippers, robotic hands, or as compliance mechanism inside a rehabilitation robot). However, their current limitations prevent their use on SWRR.…”

Section: Other Smart Materialsmentioning

confidence: 99%

Soft Wearable Rehabilitation Robots with Artificial Muscles based on Smart Materials: A Review

Gonzalez-Vazquez

Garcia

Kilby

et al. 2023

Advanced Intelligent Systems

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During the past decade, wearable devices such as exoskeletons have gained popularity [1] in different fields, such as the military, [2] industry, [3] and rehabilitation. [4] In the latter, rehabilitation exoskeletons are used to restore or maintain the functionality and mobility of people with physical disabilities. [5] These are receiving greater attention as the number of people with disabilities affecting physical performance will increase in the following decades as the population ages and individuals live longer with noncommunicable conditions (e.g., cerebral palsy, stroke, acquired brain injuries, and muscular dystrophies). [6][7][8] Most current exoskeletons use electric motors and rigid links to realize actuation and often have heavy and bulky designs that are difficult to safely wear outside clinical facilities. [9] Hence, researchers in this area are working to develop soft wearable rehabilitation robots (SWRRs), featuring soft actuators that are agreeable to the users as they have increased compliance, adaptability, comfort, safety, and less weight. [10][11][12] Currently, SWRR relies mainly upon two soft robotic technologies, cable-driven and fluidic actuators. For a cable-driven system, the wire is embedded into clothes or tubes and attached to an anchor point. The other side of the wire is connected to an electric motor to generate the desired movement and force by pulling the cable [13,14] (Figure 1a). Alternatively, in fluidic actuation (Hydraulic/Pneumatic), a pressurized fluid is inserted into a chamber made of highly deformable material to generate a displacement [11,15,16] (Figure 1b). However, these require large and heavy external pumps and valves to compress the fluid. [17] Unfortunately, cable-driven and fluidic actuation need cumbersome components (e.g., electric motors, pumps, and valves) to work, compromising the portability of the systems when used in daily life. [18] Therefore, in recent years, research has been committed to developing new actuator technologies that can overcome the drawbacks of the current actuators used in SWRR. These technologies include artificial muscles based on smart materials (AMSMs). AMSMs are soft actuators composed primarily of material with a low Young's modulus similar to that of soft biological materials (10 ^4-10 ^9 Pa) that can sense and directly convert physical stimulus (e.g., light, electrical, heat) into physical displacement. [19][20][21][22][23] Some examples of smart materials are shape-memory alloy (SMA), [24] dielectric elastomer actuators (DEAs), [25] ionic polymer-metal composites (IPMC), [26] shapememory polymers (SMPs), [27] and twisted and coiled polymer actuators (TCPs). [28] Due to their inherent properties and manufacturing processes, AMSM can be fabricated in various shapes, allowing them to be embedded into flexible and deformable wearable devices. [29][30][31][32] Furthermore, it is possible to fabricate robots with a relatively small weight and volume as they present a power density comparable to the skeletal muscles. [33] Neverthe...

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Toward Long and Strong Electroactive Supercoiled Polymer Artificial Muscles: Fabrication with Constant-Load Springs

TADA

2023

IEICE Trans. Electron.

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An artificial skeletal muscle for use in pediatric rehabilitation robotics

Cited by 3 publications

References 114 publications

DE-AFO: A Robotic Ankle Foot Orthosis for Children with Cerebral Palsy Powered by Dielectric Elastomer Artificial Muscle

DE-AFO: A Robotic Ankle Foot Orthosis for Children with Cerebral Palsy Powered by Dielectric Elastomer Artificial Muscle

Soft Wearable Rehabilitation Robots with Artificial Muscles based on Smart Materials: A Review

Toward Long and Strong Electroactive Supercoiled Polymer Artificial Muscles: Fabrication with Constant-Load Springs

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