Donal Holland

Biologically Inspired Soft Robot for Thumb Rehabilitation

More than 130,000 people have strokes each year in the United States [1]. Of these victims, 76% are left with disabilities that cost the nation over

A New Laparoscopic Morcellator Using an Actuated Wire Mesh and Bag

54 billion in lost work and medical fees. One prominent disability is upper extremity hemiplegia, which occurs among approximately 50% of stroke sufferers [2]. Robotic technology has the potential to provide an automated platform for controlled rehabilitation and assisted, task-oriented therapy. Several systems have been designed to assist in patient articulation of an impaired hand using rigid robotic components. While these products have been successful in articulating the pure bending motions of the four fingers, the limited capabilities of rigid technologies fail to reproduce the complicated motion path [5] of the thumb during opposition grasp (see Figure 1). This is the most important articulation for normal hand function and specifically for picking up everyday objects. To date, robotic systems for thumb rehabilitation have not been widely investigated [3] apart from some recent work [4] that used a multi-joint rigid robot.

Shape Deposition Manufacturing of a Soft, Atraumatic, Deployable Surgical Grasper

Laparoscopic morcellation is a technique used in gynecological surgeries such as hysterectomy and myomectomy to remove uteri and uterine fibroids (leiomyomas) through a small abdominal incision. Current morcellators use blades or bipolar energy to cut tissue into small pieces that are then removed through laparoscopic ports in a piecewise manner. These existing approaches have several limitations; (1) they are time consuming as the tissue must be manually moved over the devices during the cutting step and removal is piecewise, (2) they can lead to accidental damage to surrounding healthy tissue inside the body and (3) they do not provide safe containment of tissue during the morcellation process which can lead to seeding (spreading and regrowth) of benign or potentially cancerous tissue. This paper describes a laparoscopic morcellator that overcomes these limitations through a new design that is based on an enclosed, motor-actuated mesh that applies only an inward-directed cutting force to the tissue after it has been loaded into the protective mesh and bag. The deterministic design approach that led to this concept is presented along with the detailed electromechanical design. The prototype is tested on soft vegetables and an animal model to demonstrate successful morcellation and how the device would be compatible with current clinical practice. Results show that the time required to morcellate with the new device for a set of tests on animal tissue is relatively uniform across samples with widely varying parameters. Including tissue manipulation and extraction time, the new device is shown to have an improvement in terms of speed over current morcellators. The mean time for cutting animal tissue ranging from 100 g to 360 g was 30 s with small variations due to initial conditions. The time for cutting is expected to remain approximately constant as tissue size increases. There is also minimal risk of the protective bag ripping due to the inward-cutting action of the mesh, thereby potentially significantly reducing the risk of seeding during clinical procedures; thus, further increasing patient safety. Finally, this design may be applicable to other procedures involving removal of tissue in nongynecologic surgeries, such as full or partial kidney or spleen removal.

The Soft Robotics Toolkit: Strategies for Overcoming Obstacles to the Wide Dissemination of Soft-Robotic Hardware

Laparoscopic pancreaticoduodenectomy (also known as the Whipple procedure) is a highly-complex minimallyinvasive surgical (MIS) procedure used to remove cancer from the head of the pancreas. While mortality rates of the MIS approach are comparable with those of open procedures, morbidity rates remain high due to the delicate nature of the pancreatic tissue, proximity of high-pressure vasculature, and the number of complex anastomoses required [1]. The sharp, rigid nature of the tools and forceps used to manipulate these structures, coupled with lack of haptic feedback, can result in leakage or hemorrhage, which can obfuscate the surgeon’s view and force the surgeon to convert to an open procedure. We present a deployable atraumatic grasper with onboard pressure sensing, allowing a surgeon to grasp and manipulate soft tissue during laparoscopic pancreatic surgery. Created using shape deposition manufacturing, with pressure sensors embedded in each finger enabling real-time grip force monitoring, the device offers the potential to reduce the risk of intraoperative hemorrhage by providing the surgeon with a soft, compliant interface between delicate pancreatic tissue structures and metal laparoscopic forceps that are currently used to manipulate and retract these structures on an ad-hoc basis. Initial manipulation tasks in a simulated environment have demonstrated that the device can be deployed though a 15mm trocar and develop a stable grasp on a pancreas analog using Intuitive Surgical’s daVinci robotic end-effectors.

An Intraventricular Soft Robotic Pulsatile Assist Device for Right Ventricular Heart Failure

The Soft Robotics Toolkit (SRT) is an open-access website containing detailed information about the design, fabrication, and characterization of soft-robotic components and systems (Figure 1). Soft robotics is a growing field of research concerned with the development of electromechanical technology composed of compliant materials or structures. The SRT website hosts design files, multimedia fabrication instructions, and software tutorials submitted by an international community of soft-robotics researchers and designers. In this article, we describe the development of the SRT and some challenges in developing widely disseminated robotic-hardware resources. Our attempts to overcome these challenges in the development of the toolkit are discussed by focusing on strategies that have been used to engage participants ranging from K-12 grade students to robotics research groups. A series of design competitions encouraged people to use and contribute to the toolkit. New fabrication methods requiring only low-cost and accessible materials were developed to lower the entry barriers to soft robotics and instructional materials and outreach activities were used to engage new audiences. We hope that our experiences in developing and scaling the toolkit may serve as guidance for other open robotic-hardware projects.

Soft Wearable Orthotic Device for Assisting Kicking Motion in Developmentally Delayed Infants

Heart failure occurs when either or both ventricles of the heart cannot pump sufficient blood to meet the metabolic needs of the body. While symptoms vary widely depending on which ventricle is failing and the underlying cause, the standard indicator of failure is low ejection fraction, which is the volumetric proportion of blood ejected when the ventricle contracts. Effective therapies for heart failure target the etiology, but treatment of symptoms is also necessary to sustain patient health and quality of life. Though early-stage heart failure can be treated with drugs, more advanced cases require support from a ventricular assist device (VAD) [1]. Such devices assume some or all of the heart’s pumping work, unloading the heart and restoring normal circulation, until the patient recovers or a transplant becomes available. Due to its more complex geometry and motion, right ventricular heart failure (RVHF) is less understood than left ventricular heart failure and has fewer treatment options. Currently, only 1 implantable and 2 paracorporeal devices are FDA-approved for mechanical circulatory support of the right ventricle [2], and all are originally LVADs set to produce lower pressures. Implantation requires cannulation via sternotomy, which is a very invasive procedure. In addition, all current VADs require blood to flow through the device, which presents a thrombogenic risk. Newer VADs mitigate this by using magnetic suspension for contactless bearings, but this is power-intensive and reduces portability. This paper presents the design of a VAD tailored for the right ventricle, which leverages its specific geometry and lower pressure in order to avoid the major pitfalls of current VADs.

The Open Paradigm in Design Research

Cerebral palsy is diagnosed in 1 out of 3000 people in the U.S. Nearly half of affected children have a limited ability to crawl and walk and a majority of them rely on the use of assistive devices for mobility [1]. Exploratory kicking motion in infants is essential for developing the coordination between the knee and hip joints, which leads to crawling and eventually the development of a coordinated gait [2]. Because infants with cerebral palsy tend to exhibit very little independent motion during the kicking stage, they often have gait deficiencies that limit their ability to walk when they reach adulthood [3]. Cerebral palsy is typically not diagnosed until the age of two, when a child starts walking and abnormal gait patterns become apparent. At that point, the abnormalities are difficult if not impossible to correct without costly and invasive treatment methods. On the other hand, several well-known factors are associated with an increased probability of developing cerebral palsy, most notably premature birth [1]. In these cases, early intervention treatment can be administered during the infant stage and has the potential to stimulate the formation of neuromuscular connections that would otherwise not develop due to the onset of the impairment [3]. However, the high cost and scarcity of such methods limit their current utility as potential therapies. There is a need for early intervention treatment methods that can improve infants’ motor coordination before they begin walking; such treatments would likely reduce gait deficiencies and dependence on assistive devices later in life. The soft, wearable kicking device presented in this paper actively assists kicking in infants at the hip and knee joints in all relevant planes of motion. By stimulating kicking motion, the device may help build nerve connections in the infants’ legs, thereby improving the development of motor control and proper gait.

Towards the design of a new humanoid robot for domestic applications

Introduction The shift from closed to open paradigms in new product development is seen as an emergence of new forms of production, innovation, and design.1 Innovation processes are shifting from open source software to open source hardware design. Emulating open source software, design information for open source hardware is shared publicly to enhance the development of physical products, machines, and systems.2 Similarly, the rise of the “maker culture” enhances product tinkering,3 while the do-it-yourself (DIY) movement embraces “the open” in design.4 Users participate in design via crowdsourcing and co-creation on platforms such as OpenIdeo and Quirky and by joining proliferating open innovation challenges.5 At the back end of the design process, customers are invited to participate in mass customization and personalization to personalize products.6 The open paradigm has received scholarly attention through studies of open source software7 and open source hardware.8 Moreover, user engagement in the design process has been studied as user-centric innovation,9 participatory design,10 and codesign,11 as well as customer co-creation and crowdsourcing.12 However, the “open” landscape in design lacks consensus regarding a unified definition for open design practices. This lack of agreement partially results from the gap in approaches to design. Studies of innovation and new product development are focused on user-centric approaches and customer engagement in several stages of the design process, whereas current definitions of open design are focused on openness of technical design information and largely exclude, in particular, the early stages of the design process. The open design definitions also lack the commercial aspects of openness. Thus, the existing definitions are too narrow to holistically represent the shift from a closed paradigm to an open paradigm in design. Moreover, the lack of clarity and consistency in definitions is hindering the development of open design as a design approach. To fully advance the research on methods and practices, a more comprehensive perception of openness in the design process is needed. 1 See, e.g., Henry Chesbrough, “Open Innovation: A New Paradigm for Understanding Industrial Innovation,” in Open Innovation: Researching a New Paradigm, ed. Henry Chesbrough, Wim Vanhaverbeke, Joel West, (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2006), 1–34; Henry Chesbrough, Open Services Innovation: Rethinking Your Business to Grow and Compete in a New Era (San Francisco: Jossey-Bass, 2011, Kindle edition); Eric von Hippel, Democratizing Innovation (Cambridge, MA: MIT Press, 2005); Yochai Benkler, “Coase’s Penguin, or Linux and the Nature of the Firm,” Yale Law Journal 112 (2002): 371–446. 2 Christina Raasch, Cornelius Herstatt, and Kerstin Balka, “On the Open Design of Tangible Goods,” R&D Management 39, no. 4 (2009): 382–93. 3 Chris Anderson, Makers: The New Industrial Revolution (New York: Crown, 2012). 4 Hilde Bouchez, “Pimp Your Home: Or Why Design Cannot Remain Exclusive—From a Consumer Perspective,” The Design Journal 15, no. 4 (2012): 461–78. 5 Lars Bo Jeppesen and Karim R. Lakhani, “Marginality and Problem-Solving Effectiveness in Broadcast Search,” Organization Science: Articles in Advance 21, no. 5 (2010): 1016–33. 6 Fabrizio Salvador, Pablo Martin de Holan, and Frank Piller, “Cracking the Code for Mass-Customization,” Sloan Management Review 50, no. 3 (2009): 71–78. 7 Eric von Hippel and Georg von Krogh, “Open Source Software and the ‘PrivateCollective’ Innovation Model: Issues for Organization Science,” Organization Science 14, no. 2 (2003): 209–23. 8 Sanne van der Beek, “From Representation to Rhizome: Open Design from a Relational Perspective,” The Design Journal 15, no. 4 (2012): 423–42. 9 von Hippel, Democratizing Innovation, 17.

Multifunctional Laparoscopic Trocar With Built-in Fascial Closure and Stabilization

Robots that possess the ability to undertake everyday tasks in domestic environments have the potential to provide unprecedented independence to disabled and elderly people who are currently reliant on other people to do these jobs for them. In addition to the ability to perform basic tasks, it is desirable that such robots possess some form of social interface such that users can interact with them in a natural manner. While many robot platforms have been developed to perform everyday tasks, few systems possess high levels of mechanical efficiency, system stability, practical functionality and a dynamic social interface. This work presents the novel design of a humanoid robot that uses wheels for locomotion and the combination of an actuated stabilizer and a self-balancing control algorithm to maintain stability. To validate some of the basic concepts in this design, a full scale working prototype was built and its performance was tested. It was found that despite being the first prototype of its type, it was capable of robust locomotion in indoor environments and was capable of traversing small bumps with relative ease. It was also very efficient at picking up small items that from the ground.

Temporal and spatial asymmetries during stationary cycling cause different feedforward and feedback modifications in the muscular control of the lower limbs

School of Engineering and Applied Sciences, Harvard University, Cambridge, MA Harvard College, Harvard University, Cambridge, MA Wyss Institute for Biologically Inspired Engineering, Harvard University, Cambridge, MA Department of Obstetrics and Gynecology, Beth Israel Deaconess Medical Center, Boston, MA Department of Electrical Engineering, Munich University of Technology, Munich, Germany Department of Mechanical and Manufacturing Engineering, Trinity College, Dublin, Ireland