New fibers can make breath-regulating garments
'Robotic' textiles could help performers and athletes train their
breathing, and potentially help patients recovering from postsurgery breathing changes.

Date:
October 19, 2021
Source:
Massachusetts Institute of Technology
Summary:
A new kind of fiber can be made into clothing that senses how much
it is being stretched or compressed, and then provides immediate
tactile feedback in the form of pressure, lateral stretch, or
vibration. Such fabrics could be used in garments that help train
singers or athletes to better control their breathing, or that
help patients recovering from disease or surgery to recover their
breathing patterns.



FULL STORY ==========================================================================
A new kind of fiber developed by researchers at MIT and in Sweden can
be made into clothing that senses how much it is being stretched or
compressed, and then provides immediate tactile feedback in the form of pressure, lateral stretch, or vibration. Such fabrics, the team suggests,
could be used in garments that help train singers or athletes to better
control their breathing, or that help patients recovering from disease
or surgery to recover their breathing patterns.


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The multilayered fibers contain a fluid channel in the center, which
can be activated by a fluidic system. This system controls the fibers'
geometry by pressurizing and releasing a fluid medium, such as compressed
air or water, into the channel, allowing the fiber to act as an artificial muscle. The fibers also contain stretchable sensors that can detect and
measure the degree of stretching of the fibers. The resulting composite
fibers are thin and flexible enough to be sewn, woven, or knitted using standard commercial machines.

The fibers, dubbed OmniFibers, are being presented this week at
the Association for Computing Machinery's User Interface Software
and Technology online conference, in a paper by Ozgun Kilic Afsar,
a visiting doctoral student and research affiliate at MIT; Hiroshi
Ishii, the Jerome B. Wiesner Professor of Media Arts and Sciences; and
eight others from the MIT Media Lab, Uppsala University, and KTH Royal Institute of Technology in Sweden.

The new fiber architecture has a number of key features. Its extremely
narrow size and use of inexpensive material make it relatively easy to structure the fibers into a variety of fabric forms. It's also compatible
with human skin, since its outer layer is based on a material similar to
common polyester. And, its fast response time and the strength and variety
of the forces it can impart allow for a rapid feedback system for training
or remote communications using haptics (based on the sense of touch).

Afsar says that the shortcomings of most existing artificial muscle fibers
are that they are either thermally activated, which can cause overheating
when used in contact with human skin, or they have low power efficiency
or arduous training processes. These systems often have slow response
and recovery times, limiting their immediate usability in applications
that require rapid feedback, she says.

As an initial test application of the material, the team made a type of undergarment that singers can wear to monitor and play back the movement
of respiratory muscles, to later provide kinesthetic feedback through
the same garment to encourage optimal posture and breathing patterns for
the desired vocal performance. "Singing is particularly close to home,
as my mom is an opera singer. She's a soprano," she says. In the design
and fabrication process of this garment, Afsar has worked closely with
a classically trained opera singer, Kelsey Cotton.



==========================================================================
"I really wanted to capture this expertise in a tangible form," Afsar
says. The researchers had the singer perform while wearing the garment
made of their robotic fibers, and recorded the movement data from the
strain sensors woven into the garment. Then, they translated the sensor
data to the corresponding tactile feedback. "We eventually were able
to achieve both the sensing and the modes of actuation that we wanted
in the textile, to record and replay the complex movements that we
could capture from an expert singer's physiology and transpose it to a nonsinger, a novice learner's body. So, we are not just capturing this knowledge from an expert, but we are able to haptically transfer that
to someone who is just learning," she says.

Though this initial testing is in the context of vocal pedagogy, the same approach could be used to help athletes to learn how best to control
their breathing in a given situation, based on monitoring accomplished
athletes as they carry out various activities and stimulating the muscle
groups that are in action, Afsar says. Eventually, the hope is that such garments could also be used to help patients regain healthy breathing
patterns after major surgery or a respiratory disease such as Covid-19,
or even as an alternative treatment for sleep apnea (which Afsar suffered
from as a child, she says).

The physiology of breathing is actually quite complex, explains Afsar,
who is carrying out this work as part of her doctoral thesis at KTH
Royal Institute of Technology. "We are not quite aware of which muscles
we use and what the physiology of breathing consists of," she says. So,
the garments they designed have separate modules to monitor different
muscle groups as the wearer breathes in and out, and can replay the
individual motions to stimulate the activation of each muscle group.

Ishii says he can foresee a variety of applications for this technology.

"Everybody has to breathe. Breathing has a major impact on productivity, confidence, and performance," he says. "Breathing is important for
singing, but also this can help when recovering from surgery or
depression. For example, breathing is so important for meditation."
The system also might be useful for training other kinds of muscle
movements besides breathing, he says. For example, "Many of our artists
studied amazing calligraphy, but I want to feel the dynamics of the stroke
of the brushes," which might be accomplished with a sleeve and glove
made of this closed-loop- feedback material. And Olympic athletes might
sharpen their skills by wearing a garment that reproduces the movements
of a top athlete, whether a weightlifter or a skier, he suggests.

The soft fiber composite, which resembles a strand of yarn, has five
layers: the innermost fluid channel, a silicone-based elastomeric
tube to contain the working fluid, a soft stretchable sensor that
detects strain as a change in electrical resistance, a braided polymer stretchable outer mesh that controls the outer dimensions of the fiber,
and a nonstretchy filament that provides a mechanical constraint on the
overall extensibility.

Afsar plans to continue working on making the whole system, including
its control electronics and compressed air supply, even more miniaturized
to keep it as unobtrusive as possible, and to develop the manufacturing
system to be able to produce longer filaments. In coming months, she
plans to begin experiments in using the system for transferring skills
from an expert to a novice singer, and later to explore different kinds
of movement practices, including those of choreographers and dancers.

The research was supported by the Swedish Foundation for Strategic
Research.

The team included Ali Shtarbanov, Hila Mor, Ken Nakagaki, and Jack Forman
at MIT, Kristina Hook at KTH Royal Institute of Technology, and Karen
Modrei, Seung Hee Jeong, and Klas Hjort at Uppsala University, Sweden.

========================================================================== Story Source: Materials provided by
Massachusetts_Institute_of_Technology. Original written by David
L. Chandler. Note: Content may be edited for style and length.


========================================================================== Journal Reference:
1. Ozgun Kilic Afsar, Ali Shtarbanov, Hila Mor, Ken Nakagaki,
Jack Forman,
Karen Modrei, Seung Hee Jeong, Klas Hjort, Kristina Ho"o"k,
Hiroshi Ishii. OmniFiber: Integrated Fluidic Fiber Actuators for
Weaving Movement based Interactions into the `Fabric of Everyday
Life'. UIST '21: The 34th Annual ACM Symposium on User Interface
Software and Technology, October 2021 Pages 1010%u20131026 DOI:
10.1145/3472749.3474802 ==========================================================================

Link to news story: https://www.sciencedaily.com/releases/2021/10/211019082722.htm

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