Project description
Assistive technology for muscle weakness
Many people with severe upper limb muscle weakness due to neurological disorders struggle to find effective assistive technologies. Current solutions, such as wearable exoskeletons, show promise but face significant barriers, including inefficiency, poor controllability, and unreliable user connections. In this context, the ERC-funded MUSE project aims to develop soft external muscles, or exomuscles, that seamlessly integrate with users’ natural movements. By using advanced pneumatic actuators and osseointegration techniques, MUSE offers a reliable connection between the device and the body, enabling enhanced motion control through sensory feedback. This approach not only aims to improve daily living for individuals with muscle weakness but could also pave the way for more sophisticated interactions between humans and machines.
Objective
People that suffer from severe muscle weakness of the (upper) limb following neurological disorders still struggle to find assistive technologies able to help them in their daily life. The most advanced technologies consist of wearable exoskeletons, either rigid or soft, that promise to support the wearer during daily living. Despite their great potential, the widespread adoption of exoskeletons where they are most needed – i.e. for continuous daily home assistance – is prevented by several flaws: limited efficiency, controllability, and lack of reliable ways to connect them to the user. MUSE (MusculoSkeletal Expansion) abandons the paradigm of wearing an exoskeleton to develop and clinically assess soft external muscles (exomuscles) intimately connected and naturally controlled by the user. The core objective is to develop innovative efficient exomuscles to support people with severe muscle weakness. With my solid experience in soft robotics and innovative materials, I will develop them by combining the extreme portability of pneumatic actuators made of textiles with the energy efficiency and promptness of non-linear elastic structures. They will be reliably connected to the user through fixtures implanted on the bones, which will grant the excellent mechanical stability of osseointegration, widely adopted in dental prosthetics and increasingly explored in limb prosthetics, but still unexplored in exoskeletons. This approach will unlock the potential of eliciting osseoperception, i.e. sensory feedback – necessary to control motion – through bone conduction. If successful, MUSE will benefit all those in need of sensorimotor augmentation, as it can be extended to all kinds of exoskeletons (from upper to lower limbs, from assistive to augmenting devices). Moreover, since MUSE connects the inner body to the external world, it may be the cornerstone to build a bidirectional gateway between them, bridging the human and the machine to a more and more intimate level.
Fields of science (EuroSciVoc)
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- engineering and technology electrical engineering, electronic engineering, information engineering electronic engineering robotics
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Project’s keywords as indicated by the project coordinator. Not to be confused with the EuroSciVoc taxonomy (Fields of science)
Programme(s)
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HORIZON.1.1 - European Research Council (ERC)
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(opens in new window) ERC-2023-STG
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56127 Pisa
Italy
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