Texoskeleton: transforming everyday clothing into intelligent self-adaptable soft robots for applications in wrist and hand rehabilitation
Project ID: 2531bd1657
(You will need this ID for your application)
Research Theme: Engineering
Research Area(s):
Engineering
Materials
Information and communications technologies
UCL Lead department: Division of Surgery and Interventional Sciences
Lead Supervisor: Tom Carlson
Project Summary:
Our overarching aim is to address the need for an accessible, continuously usable, and personalisable system to assist people in their rehabilitation journey. Rehabilitation demand exceeds the current outdated care models relying on specialist supervision and clinic visits, creating cost and accessibility barriers. This project focuses on wrist and hand rehabilitation by developing a textile-based device to support those with a dysfunction at the wrist/hand due to pathology/injury. Developing a technology for at-home movement exercises with movement assistance/resistance, coupled with sensing, can intensify rehabilitation, aid recovery, and provide clinicians with valuable patient progress metrics.
The student will work on the development of smart textile yarns that integrate seamlessly into everyday clothing and utilise a sense-act framework to assist patients in their recovery. The yarn-based approach will preserve the conformability, comfortability and normalcy of wearing a textile. Unlike intrusive and heavy exoskeleton-based robots, this technology can discreetly aid patients during rehabilitation and daily activities. The student will get to build on stakeholder/patient feedback, create, and test a prototype, and devise the research programme that will ultimately develop these soft robotic clothing.
The textile exoskeleton design will follow a user-centered co-development approach to meet patient needs. This will include workshops, surveys and focus groups with clinicians and patients (recruited via our established collaborators at the RNOH and Queen’s Square). They can then use the engineering tools at UCL and draw from our previous work on textile-based sensing and actuating yarns to devise a solution that matches the clinical requirements. Design guidelines must be developed to ensure actuators/sensors have minimally impact on textile aesthetics, mechanical qualities and washability.
The project will involve user trials on healthy volunteers and patients to assess the textile’s performance.
A motivated candidate with a background in electronic/electrical/mechatronic engineering is sought, whilst experience with textiles/wearables/haptics would be advantageous.