New biorobotic arm could lead to wearable device for tremor patients

New biorobotic arm could lead to wearable device for tremor patients

It is estimated that around 80 million people worldwide live with tremors. For example, those living with Parkinson's disease. The involuntary periodic movements sometimes greatly affect how patients can carry out daily activities, such as walking. B. drinking from a glass or writing. Wearable soft robotic devices offer a potential solution to suppress such tremors. However, existing prototypes are not yet sophisticated enough to provide a real remedy.

Scientists from the Max Planck Institute for Intelligent Systems (MPI-IS), the University of Tübingen and the University of Stuttgart under the collaboration of Bionic Intelligence Tübingen Stuttgart (Bits) want to change this. The team gutted a biorobotic arm with two strands of artificial muscles strapped to the forearm. As seen in this video, the biorobotic arm - referred to here as a mechanical patient - simulates tremors. Multiple real tremors were recorded and projected onto the biorobotic arm, which then reflected each patient shaking the wrist and hand. Once tremor suppression is activated, the lightweight artificial muscles composed of electro-hydraulic actuators will contort and relax to compensate for the back and forth motion. Now the tremors can barely be felt or seen.

The team aims to achieve two goals with this arm: First, the team sees its biorobotic arm as a platform for other scientists on site to test new ideas in assistive exoskeleton technology. Together with their biomechanical computer simulations, developers can quickly confirm how well their soft artificial muscles work, avoiding time-consuming and costly clinical testing on real patients - which isn't even legally possible in some countries.

In addition, the arm serves as a test bed for the artificial muscles for which the Robotic Materials Department at MPI-IS is known in the scientific community. Over the years, these so-called Hasels have been fine-tuned and improved. It is the team's vision that hazels will one day become the building blocks of an assistive wearable device that tremor patients can wear comfortably to better cope with everyday tasks like holding a cup.

“We see great potential for our muscles to become the building blocks of a garment that one can wear very discreetly, so that others do not even realize that the person is suffering from a tremor,” says Alona Shagan Shomron, a postdoctoral researcher in the robotic materials department at MPI-IS and the first author of a research paper published in the journal Device. "We have shown that our artificial muscles based on Hasel technology are fast and strong enough for a wide range of wrist tremors. This shows the great potential of a Hasel-based, wearable aid for people living with tremors," adds Shagan.

"With the combination of mechanical patient and biomechanical model, we can measure whether all the artificial muscles tested are good enough to suppress all tremors, even very strong ones. So if we ever create a wearable device, we can customize it so that we respond to each tremor individually," adds Daniel Häufle. He is a professor at the Hertie Institute for Clinical Brain Research at the University of Tübingen. Among other things, he created the computer simulation and collected tremor data from patients.

The mechanical patient allows us to test the potential of new technologies very early in development, without the need for expensive and time-consuming clinical testing in real patients. Many good ideas are often not pursued because clinical trials are expensive, time-consuming and difficult to finance in the very early stages of technology development. Our mechanical patient is the solution that allows us to test the potential very early in development. “

Syn Schmitt, Professor of Computational Biophysics and Biorobotics, University of Stuttgart

"Robotics has great potential for healthcare applications. This successful project shows the key role played by flexible and deformable materials based on soft robotic systems," concludes Christoph Keplinger, Director of the Robotic Materials Department at MPI-IS.

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