9 accepted papers
Wearable exosuits assist human movement in tasks ranging from rehabilitation to daily activities; specifically, head-neck support is necessary for patients with certain neurological disorders. Rigid-link exoskeletons have shown to enable head-neck mobility compared to static braces, but their bulkin…
Attaching a wearable device to the user's body for comfort and function while accommodating the differences and changes in body shapes often represents a challenge. In this paper, we propose an approach that addresses this problem through granular jamming, where a granule-filled membrane stiffens by
This paper presents a novel cable-driven exosuit intended for head-neck support and movement assistance. Mobility limitations in the head-neck, such as dropped head syndrome, can result from various neurological disorders. Current solutions, ranging from static neck collars to rigid-link robotic nec
Wearable robots are designed to provide physical assistance and rehabilitation training. Light-weight designs are desirable for human usage and parallel robots are quite suitable due to low moving inertia. One of the challenges of using wearable parallel robots is to compute the end-effector positio…
Force perturbation is used in this paper to study cervical neuromuscular responses which can be used in the future to assess impairments in patients with neurological diseases. Current literature on this topic is limited to applying forces on the head in the anterior-posterior direction, perhaps due…
Coordinated head-neck movement is a challenge for patients with neurological disorders, such as cerebral palsy and amyotrophic lateral sclerosis. Neck collars are commonly used to stabilize the head-neck in these patients. These collars are mostly rigid and uncomfortable to wear for extended periods
Dropped head syndrome is often seen in patients with neurological disorders, such as amyotrophic lateral sclerosis. Static collars are often prescribed to these patients to support their head. These collars support the head in one position but do not allow motion to the head. In this letter, we pres
Head drop is a symptom commonly seen in patients with amyotrophic lateral sclerosis. These patients usually experience neck pain and have difficulty in swallowing and breathing. Static neck braces are used in current treatment. These braces, however, immobilize the head in a single configuration, wh