CAREER: Textile-Based Wearable Robots with Integrated Fluidic Logic

This Faculty Early Career Development (CAREER) award supports research to integrate fluidic computation—in which electronic voltages and currents are replaced by fluid pressure differences and flows—directly into a textile-based platform. Integration of fluidic logic in textiles represents an important step toward fully soft, untethered wearable assistive robots capable of improving quality of life for the 85 million adults in the United States living with physical functional limitations.

Existing soft fluidic actuators for motion assistance and rehabilitation currently rely on hard valves and bulky electronic control systems which increase system weight and decrease comfort or require cumbersome tethers to external infrastructure, limiting adoption of these technologies. Textile-based fluidic computers will overcome this limitation, allowing onboard memory, decision making, and interaction with the environment, and leading to truly soft wearable assistive robots that look and feel like everyday clothing.

An integrated educational plan focused on teaching, outreach, and mentoring will allow simultaneous development of impactful and innovative technology and promotion of the next generation of leaders in STEM. Planned activities include the use of hands-on fluid logic components in a local museum outreach and undergraduate curriculum that will be disseminated online, and longitudinal mentoring of high school and undergraduate students, with focus on underrepresented groups.

To develop a textile-based platform for fluidic computation, a stepwise approach is taken. First, a deep fundamental understanding will be developed at the circuit element level by designing and characterizing textile-based fluidic analogs to resistors, capacitors, and relays. These circuit elements will be used as building blocks for fluidic digital logic, which will be engineered for high performance in terms of speed and other computational metrics.

Finally, fluidic computers constructed from digital logic elements will be integrated directly into the structure of wearable assistive robots along with textile-based input/output devices and actuators. By default, all designs will be composite in nature, with performance dependent upon material choices and active element geometries. Design and experimental characterization will be significantly aided with physical modeling, including analytical nonlinear models of fluid flow.

Validated models of circuit elements as well as logic circuits will be one of the research outcomes. Scalability of design and repeatability of fabrication will be key factors in the evaluation of success at all levels.

This project is supported by the cross-directorate Foundational Research in Robotics program, jointly managed and funded by the Directorates for Engineering (ENG) and Computer and Information Science and Engineering (CISE).

This award reflects NSF's statutory mission and has been deemed worthy of support through evaluation using the Foundation's intellectual merit and broader impacts review criteria.