Modular and Reconfigurable Body Mounted Soft Robots

Movement disorders reduce muscle strength and mobility, and while therapeutic interventions aim to maintain mobility, many individuals with impairments are unable to function independently. Soft wearable robots (exosuits) are envisioned to provide long-term daily physical assistance to the mobility impaired, however, there is still no such commercial device widely available. A main challenge is the design, fabrication, and mounting of soft actuators to the human body. Here, we describe a canonical design framework for the development of soft, modular, and reconfigurable pneumatically driven soft actuators manufactured using textiles. Through the use of an innovative 3D-printed self-sealing end-cap, our method provides a simple and effective way for uniting and hermetically sealing actuators constructed through a layered fabrication process, where a (mechanically programmable) textile sleeve surrounds an internal bladder. To mount the actuators to the body, we have developed a semi-rigid interface consisting of modular segments that fasten together to form cylindrical units that can be mounted to the limb and include snap-in fasteners to attach actuators. The human-robot interfaces act to secure the actuators to the body and to optimize and distribute mechanical power transfer over a large area. Taken together, our proposed modular architecture allows the actuators and their attachment points to be easily modified so that an exosuit for the knee, elbow, or other joints, can be realized with the same set of hardware. We demonstrated our proposed design on a realistic human leg mannequin and our results verify its ability to provide substantial force to the body.