Paper Info
Title
Exo-Abs: A Wearable Robotic System Inspired by Human Abdominal Muscles for Noninvasive and Effort-Synchronized Respiratory Assistance
Abstract
Existing technologies for patients with respiratory insufficiency have focused on providing reliable assistance in their breathing. However, the need for assistance in other everyday respiratory functions, such as coughing and speaking, has remained unmet in these patients. Here, we propose Exo-Abs, a wearable robotic system that can universally assist wide-ranging respiratory functions by applying compensatory force to a user's abdomen in synchronization with their air usage. Inspired by how human abdominal muscles transmit pressure to the lungs via abdominal cavity compression, a biomechanically interactive platform was developed to optimally utilize the abdominal compression while aligning the assistance with a user's spontaneous respiratory effort. In addition to the compact form factor, thorough analytic procedures are described as initial steps toward taking the human respiratory system into the scope of robotics technology. We demonstrate the validity of the overall human–system interaction with the assistance performance under three essential respiratory functions: breathing, coughing, and speaking. Our results show that the system can significantly improve the performance of all these functions by granting on-demand and self-reliant assistance to its users.
Year
DOI
Venue
2022
10.1109/TRO.2022.3167399
IEEE Transactions on Robotics
Keywords
DocType
Volume
Assistive technology,biologically inspired robots,biomedical engineering,human–robot augmentation,physical human–robot interaction,rehabilitation robotics
Journal
38
Issue
ISSN
Citations 
5
1552-3098
0
PageRank 
References 
Authors
0.34
11
7
Name
Order
Citations
PageRank
Sang-Yoep Lee100.34
Jin-Oh Hahn210221.28
Jaewon Beom300.34
Ji-Hong Park400.34
Han Eol Cho500.34
Seong-Woong Kang600.34
Kyu-Jin Cho732470.86