Novel Accordion-Inspired Foldable Pneumatic Actuators for Knee Assistive Devices

Fang, Jing; Yuan, Jianping; Wang, Mingming; Xiao, Liangfeng; Yang, Jianli; Lin, Zhiqiang; Xu, Peixuan; Hou, Linliang

doi:10.1089/soro.2018.0155

Cited by 52 publications

(25 citation statements)

References 38 publications

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“…f) Layers of heat‐sealable textiles bonded selectively enable an accordion‐shaped actuator to provide torsional assistance to the knee. [ 289 ] Alternative image provided by the authors and reproduced with permission. Copyright 2020, the authors.…”

Section: Textile Actuators For Wearable Robotsmentioning

confidence: 99%

“…[ 291 ] Khin and colleagues used a v‐shaped inner fold to form a single actuator that could generate bending motions. [ 292 ] Fang and colleagues stacked heat‐sealable textile layers and bonded at the edges to form an accordion geometry for torsional actuation [ 289 ] (Figure 10f). This accordion actuator was integrated into a knee‐mounted device and provided torques as high as 25 Nm when inflated with 40 kPa of air pressure.…”

Section: Textile Actuators For Wearable Robotsmentioning

confidence: 99%

See 1 more Smart Citation

Textile Technology for Soft Robotic and Autonomous Garments

Sánchez¹,

Walsh²,

Wood³

2020

Adv Funct Materials

167

123

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Textiles have emerged as a promising class of materials for developing wearable robots that move and feel like everyday clothing. Textiles represent a favorable material platform for wearable robots due to their flexibility, low weight, breathability, and soft hand‐feel. Textiles also offer a unique level of programmability because of their inherent hierarchical nature, enabling researchers to modify and tune properties at several interdependent material scales. With these advantages and capabilities in mind, roboticists have begun to use textiles, not simply as substrates, but as functional components that program actuation and sensing. In parallel, materials scientists are developing new materials that respond to thermal, electrical, and hygroscopic stimuli by leveraging textile structures for function. Although textiles are one of humankind's oldest technologies, materials scientists and roboticists are just beginning to tap into their potential. This review provides a textile‐centric survey of the current state of the art in wearable robotic garments and highlights metrics that will guide materials development. Recent advances in textile materials for robotic components (i.e., as sensors, actuators, and integration components) are described with a focus on how these materials and technologies set the stage for wearable robots programmed at the material level.

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Section: Textile Actuators For Wearable Robotsmentioning

confidence: 99%

Section: Textile Actuators For Wearable Robotsmentioning

confidence: 99%

Textile Technology for Soft Robotic and Autonomous Garments

Sánchez¹,

Walsh²,

Wood³

2020

Adv Funct Materials

167

123

View full text Add to dashboard Cite

show abstract

“…Fang et al designed a foldable pneumatic bending actuator (FPBA), which were fabricated using thermoplastic polyurethane fabric materials and developed for an FPBA-based knee Exosuit [37]. FPBAs were formed in a bellow structure and could be folded into fan shapes to achieve different folding angles from 0 to 360°.…”

Section: Pneumatic Fluid-powered Actuationmentioning

confidence: 99%

Soft Actuators and Robotic Devices for Rehabilitation and Assistance

Pan

Yuan²,

Liang³

et al. 2021

Preprint

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Soft actuators and robotic devices have been increasingly applied to the field of rehabilitation and assistance, where safe human and machine interaction is of particular importance. Compared with their widely used rigid counterparts, soft actuators and robotic devices can provide a range of significant advantages; these include safe interaction, a range of complex motions, ease of fabrication and resilience to a variety of environments. In recent decades, significant effort has been invested in the development of soft rehabilitation and assistive devices for improving a range of medical treatments and quality of life. This review provides an overview of the current state-of-the-art in soft actuators and robotic devices for rehabilitation and assistance, in particular systems that achieve actuation by pneumatic and hydraulic fluid-power, electrical motors, chemical reactions and soft active materials such as dielectric elastomers, shape memory alloys, magnetoactive elastomers, liquid crystal elastomers and piezoelectric materials. Current research on soft rehabilitation and assistive devices is in its infancy, and new device designs and control strategies for improved performance and safe human-machine interaction are identified as particularly untapped areas of research. Finally, insights into future research directions are outlined. Corresponding author(s) Email: mp351@bath.ac.uk, liutao@zju.edu.cn

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“…[52][53][54][55] Existing models of textile-based actuators have typically been used for static structures [56][57][58][59] but there has been some recent work on finite element modeling of knitted textile actuators for wearable applications. 48,60 Nesler et al 61 and Fang et al 62 both presented an elegant analytical approach for predicting the behavior of unfolding textile-based actuators by modeling the energetics of inflating the actuator. By assuming that the textile behaves as an inextensible membrane, they created a model that estimated the torque output of the actuator as a function of the fluidic input.…”

Section: Introductionmentioning

confidence: 99%

Unfolding Textile-Based Pneumatic Actuators for Wearable Applications

et al. 2022

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Textile based pneumatic actuators have recently seen increased development for use in wearable applications thanks to their high strength to weight ratio and range of achievable actuation modalities. However, the design of these textile-based actuators is typically an iterative process due to the complexity of predicting the soft and compliant behavior of the textiles. In this work we investigate the actuation mechanics of a range of physical prototypes of unfolding textile-based actuators to understand and develop an intuition for how the geometric parameters of the actuator affect the moment it generates, enabling more deterministic designs in the future. Under benchtop conditions the actuators were characterized at a range of actuator angles and pressures (0-136 kPa), and three distinct performance regimes were observed, which we define as Shearing, Creasing, and Flattening. During Flattening, the effects of both the length and radius of the actuator dominate with maximum moments in excess of 80 Nm being generated, while during Creasing the radius dominates with generated moments scaling with the cube of the radius. Low stiffness spring like behavior is observed in the Shearing regime, which occurs as the actuator approaches its unfolded angle. A piecewise analytical model was also developed and compared to the experimental results within each regime. Finally, a prototype actuator was also integrated into a shoulder assisting wearable robot, and on-body characterization of this robot was performed on five healthy individuals to observe the behavior of the actuators in a wearable application. Results from this characterization highlight that these actuators can generate useful on-body moments (10.74 Nm at 90°a ctuator angle) but that there are significant reductions compared to bench-top performance, in particular when mostly folded and at higher pressures.

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Novel Accordion-Inspired Foldable Pneumatic Actuators for Knee Assistive Devices

Cited by 52 publications

References 38 publications

Textile Technology for Soft Robotic and Autonomous Garments

Textile Technology for Soft Robotic and Autonomous Garments

Soft Actuators and Robotic Devices for Rehabilitation and Assistance

Unfolding Textile-Based Pneumatic Actuators for Wearable Applications

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