Soft Actuators for Facial Reanimation

Facial paralysis is a challenging condition that alters a patient's ability to express emotion and communicate. Restoring facial movements thus has crucial implications for the patients' quality of life. This publication introduces an approach for artificial muscles implementation targeting facial reanimation, as well as the challenges and limitations of the proposed strategy. The aim is to develop a Dielectric Elastomer Actuator (DEA) prosthesis for patients suffering from facial paralysis. DEAs are chosen as they are soft, have large strain (up to 200%) and high dynamic behaviour (up to 20 kHz), making them a promising actuator for the application. Myo-electric signals are extracted using electromyography sensors from the Zygomaticus Major muscle, and they are processed in order to emphasize the activation phases. The resulting actuating signal is used to control a high voltage power supply to operate the DEA in an open loop. The resulting induced movement qualitatively matches the myoelectric signal, showing great potential of the proposed approach for facial paralysis reanimation.