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research article

Preliminary Evaluation of a Soft Wearable Robot for Shoulder Movement Assistance

Campioni, Lorenzo
•
Dimonte, Gianluca
•
Sciarrone, Giorgia
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February 1, 2025
IEEE Transactions On Medical Robotics And Bionics

Spinal cord injuries (SCI) often lead to upper limb impairment, necessitating innovative solutions for daily assistance beyond traditional rigid robotics due to their impractical weight and size. Despite still preliminary, soft wearables are arising as a possible solution to fill this gap. Here, we demonstrated an enhanced version of a soft inflatable robot that assists the shoulder against gravity, previously tested with different neurological conditions. Noteworthy improvements include a single-layer actuator, simplifying manufacturing, a built-in bending angle and a nylon hammock, for better armpit conformity. We characterized the actuator (approximately $8 Nm$ at 90 degrees at $70 kPa$ ) and demonstrated its good transparency, both from a kinematic and a muscular standpoint. Then, on 11 healthy individuals, we showed reductions in shoulder muscle activity (both at the anterior and middle deltoid) while performing a lift and hold task, ranging from 16% to almost 60% of the maximum voluntary contraction. More importantly, we confirmed these effects on two SCI individuals SCI, at two different stages of recovery. While preliminary, considering the limited exploration of soft wearable robots for the shoulder in SCI cases, this is a significant advancement playing an important role in the development of future soft technology for SCI assistance.

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Type
research article
DOI
10.1109/TMRB.2025.3527708
Web of Science ID

WOS:001435470100024

Author(s)
Campioni, Lorenzo

Polytechnic University of Milan

Dimonte, Gianluca

Polytechnic University of Milan

Sciarrone, Giorgia

University of Florence

Righi, Gabriele

University of Florence

Walsh, Conor

Harvard University

Gandolla, Marta
Del Popolo, Giulio

University of Florence

Micera, Silvestro  

École Polytechnique Fédérale de Lausanne

Proietti, Tommaso

Vita-Salute San Raffaele University

Date Issued

2025-02-01

Publisher

IEEE-INST ELECTRICAL ELECTRONICS ENGINEERS INC

Published in
IEEE Transactions On Medical Robotics And Bionics
Volume

7

Issue

1

Start page

315

End page

324

Subjects

Actuators

•

Shoulder

•

Robots

•

Bending

•

Wearable robots

•

Testing

•

Soft robotics

•

Robot sensing systems

•

Torso

•

Read only memory

•

Soft wearable robotics

•

rehabilitation robotics

•

spinal cord injury

Editorial or Peer reviewed

REVIEWED

Written at

EPFL

EPFL units
TNE  
FunderFunding(s)Grant NumberGrant URL

NEXTGENERATIONEU (NGEU)

Ministry of Education, Universities and Research (MIUR)

IECS00000017;PE0000006

Bertarelli Foundation

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Available on Infoscience
March 14, 2025
Use this identifier to reference this record
https://infoscience.epfl.ch/handle/20.500.14299/247793
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