The goal of my PhD is to ultimately create a suite of upper limb soft wearables that can assist rehabilitation. The fold-based design that I invented would be used as the basis of these soft wearables. And what better (and easier) place to start than the hands and fingers?

*The proximal end, which is attached to the glove’s main structure, is designed to be easily detachable.*

Naturally, the wearable should take the form of a glove exoskeleton and various features are built in to make it more user-friendly. For one, the soft actuators are meant to be easily detachable, either for maintenance or replacement. Second, thimbles are created for the fingers otherwise there won’t be any place for the fingers to go.

Not to brag about my own invention but I think the assembled product looks mighty cool. Of course, experiments were done to evaluate the wearable scientifically and results can be found in the full conference publication.

I intended this glove to be fully 3D printed. The primary reason was because I saw 3D printing as the future of manufacturing. There are endless designs that a 3D printer can achieve unlike other methods like injection molding and this soft wearable is but one of them. 3D printers are also more accessible than before with so many consumer grade printers available; this is also printed on one. Imagine someone who had a stroke, being able to 3D print this himself/herself and conduct physiotherapy at home instead of having to travel to a rehabilitation center. In the comfort of your own home, with your family, wouldn’t that boost recovery rates? Maybe this hypothesis needs some proving but if I were in those shoes, I would prefer so.

This device made it to market but not through my hands though. My senior cofounded a spinoff company that has a fabric variation of this and it has been used extensively in various settings. Regardless, I am glad that this work went places and did some good.

My First Conference Publication

The Second Piece of the Puzzle

The Cornerstone