By clothing-bag, 21/04/2022

T-shirts to learn to control breathing like athletes and sopranos: MIT creates robotic fibers for clothing that act as artificial muscles

MIT has been doing wonders in recent years in the field of robotics: among other milestones, they have managed to create an automaton capable of finding lost objects, a robotic arm that helps the elderly get dressed, as well as nanorobots that travel to the inside your body to discover diseases.

Now scientists at MIT and Sweden have created robotic clothing fibers that act like artificial muscles and can be woven and embedded directly into clothing, providing immediate tactile feedback.

Its possibilities are vast and ambitious: T-shirts could be made to help singers and athletes train for better breath control, or special garments for patients to recover from illness or surgery.

How have they achieved it? The researchers explain that their innovation, which they have called OmniFibers, is made up of multilayer fibers with a fluid channel in the center that can be activated by controlling their geometry. To do this, it pressurizes and releases a fluid medium, such as water or compressed air, which allows it to act like a synthetic muscle.

On the other hand, the sensors integrated in the technology detect and measure the degree of stretching of the fibers. The result is extremely fine and flexible, so it can be sewn, knitted or woven using standard commercial machines.

In addition to its physical properties, the material is inexpensive and biocompatible with human skin, as its outer layer is based on a common polyester-like material. All this adds up to the fact that with this robotic muscle rapid feedback systems can be manufactured for training or remote communications using haptics.

In addition, OmniFibers solve several existing problems with artificial muscle fibers: firstly, thermal overheating in contact with the skin.

Others have a low power efficiency or suffer from training processes that are too difficult, so they are not suitable for training that requires a quick response.

To test its effectiveness, MIT conducted several experiments with a special type of underwear that singers can use to monitor and reproduce the movement of the respiratory muscles.

Breathing is essential for vocal performance: the kinesthetic feedback provided by the robotic fibers corrects posture and promotes an optimal breathing pattern. A classically trained opera singer, Kelsey Cotton, has been involved in the design and manufacturing process of this garment.

The results of the initial test were captivating and have great projection for the improvement of vocal pedagogy: the singer performed with the garment on, the movement data was recorded thanks to the tension sensors and translated into the corresponding tactile feedback.

The result is precious insight: capturing the complex movements of an expert's physiology and transferring it haptically to learners.

A similar approach can be used to help athletes control their breathing or help patients recover after surgery, treatments such as sleep apnea or respiratory diseases such as covid-19.

The designed garments feature separate modules to monitor different muscle groups as the wearer inhales and exhales, and can replicate individual movements to stimulate the activation of each muscle group. "Normally we are not very aware of what muscles we use and what the physiology of breathing consists of.

“Everyone has to breathe. Breathing has a huge impact on productivity, confidence and performance,” says one of the researchers behind the project. The research was released this week at the Association for Computing Machinery online conference.