Published in IEEE Transactions on Neural Systems and Rehabilitation Engineering, 2018.
Authors: Steven Lessard, Pattawong Pansodtee, Ash Robbins, James M. Trombadore, Sri Kurniawan, Mircea Teodorescu
CRUX (Compliant Robotic Upper-extremity eXosuit) is a soft suit that helps move your arm during rehab. It weighs 1.3 kg and there's no rigid frame running down the outside of the arm. Instead it uses the same tensegrity idea as the shoulder project. Cables and elastic pieces are laid out like a model of the arm, so the whole suit gives a little when it pulls.
It helps at both the shoulder and the elbow. We also designed a set of guided exercises meant to help people rebuild control of their arm, not just have the suit move it for them.
Rigid rehab robots are precise, but to get there they put your arm inside a heavy machine. We wanted to see how far we could get by building the give into the suit itself. The tricky part was helping the arm move while still letting it move like an arm.
In a way this is where Immergo started for me. Helping people move better, with tools that stay out of the way.