A Fabric-Based Wearable Soft Robotic Limb

Abstract

In this paper, a fabric-based wearable soft robotic limb (SRL) is presented. It can be worn on the user’s body to potentially assist with activities of daily living. This SRL can perform a bidirectional bending motion by inflating the pneumatic bending actuators. The end effector, which is a fabric-based soft gripper, can pick up small objects in daily life. The SRL is pneumatically actuated, and its bending motion and payload capability were characterized. All the actuation and control systems are integrated in a portable control box. The SRL can be voice-controlled using an Android-based voice recognition mobile application. We expect the SRL to be a promising wearable tool that can assist the user in managing simple activities in daily living, while allowing the user’s natural human hands to work on more complex tasks.