Textile-based Wearable Mechanotheraphy Device with Liquid/Vapor Phase Change Actuation

Description du projet

Des dispositifs à base de textile pour une manipulation plus efficace des tissus mous

La manipulation des tissus mous est une forme puissante de mécanothérapie, qui a des répercussions sur la réadaptation physique, la prévention des maladies et la promotion de la santé. Différents types de dispositifs de manipulation des tissus musculaires ont été mis au point pour des applications cliniques. Bien que ces systèmes puissent parfaitement manipuler les tissus mous en appliquant des forces contrôlées, ils se révèlent coûteux et rigides. Financé par le programme Marie Skłodowska-Curie, le projet RoboTexTherapy entend utiliser des matériaux textiles pour développer des systèmes plus légers et plus sûrs. En cas de succès, le projet ouvrira la voie à des thérapies et des dispositifs plus performants et plus efficaces en termes de confort, de mobilité et de consommation d’énergie.

Objectif

Soft Tissue Manipulation (STM) is a powerful and direct form of mechanotherapy, which has significant implications in physical rehabilitation, disease prevention and health promotions. Different types of devices for manipulating muscle tissue have been developed for clinical applications and pneumatic compression devices are already in the market and widely used. However, these systems have limited control modalities and lack of monitoring the forces being exerted to the body during the application and previous studies have shown that the loading conditions of soft tissue have a crucial effect on the mechano-therapeutic treatment. One of the main drawback of the pneumatic compression systems is they do need rigid and bulky pumping systems for the implementation of mechanotherapy and this requirement greatly reduces the mobility of the device. Furthermore, rigid-body industrial robotic manipulators have also been used for mechano-therapeutic applications. Although these systems have the ability to perfectly manipulate soft tissue and apply controlled forces, they are expensive and do not enable safe human-device interaction due to their rigid nature. Overall, to address the challenges above I will employ textile materials to achieve both sensing and actuation with the help of phase change property of low boiling point liquids. The textile-based approach will lead to system that are lighter and mobile and safe for human-device interaction. Its successful completion will contribute to the acceleration of the soft tissue providing better and more effective therapies in terms of wearability comfort, mobility and power consumption. By combining my existing skills with newly acquired skillset that will be gained during the fellowship I will have an opportunity for securing a permanent academic position within Marmara University or a top-tier European university and starting my own research group.