Double-Sided Pressure-Sensitive Adhesive Materials under Human-Centric Extreme Environments.

Maintaining the adhesion strength of flexible pressure-sensitive adhesives (PSAs) is crucial for advanced applications, such as health monitoring. Sustainable mounting is critical for wearable sensor devices, especially under challenging surroundings such as low and high temperatures (e.g.

The Effects of Incline Level on Optimized Lower-Limb Exoskeleton Assistance: A Case Series.

For exoskeletons to be successful in real-world settings, they will need to be effective across a variety of terrains, including on inclines. While some single-joint exoskeletons have assisted incline walking, recent successes in level-ground assistance suggest that greater improvements may be possible by optimizing assistance of the whole leg. To understand how exoskeleton assistance should change with incline, we used human-in-the-loop optimization to find whole-leg exoskeleton assistance torques that minimized metabolic cost on a range of grades.

Comparing optimized exoskeleton assistance of the hip, knee, and ankle in single and multi-joint configurations.

Exoskeletons that assist the hip, knee, and ankle joints have begun to improve human mobility, particularly by reducing the metabolic cost of walking. However, direct comparisons of optimal assistance of these joints, or their combinations, have not yet been possible. Assisting multiple joints may be more beneficial than the sum of individual effects, because muscles often span multiple joints, or less effective, because single-joint assistance can indirectly aid other joints.

Optimized hip-knee-ankle exoskeleton assistance reduces the metabolic cost of walking with worn loads.

Background: Load carriage is common in a wide range of professions, but prolonged load carriage is associated with increased fatigue and overuse injuries. Exoskeletons could improve the quality of life of these professionals by reducing metabolic cost to combat fatigue and reducing muscle activity to prevent injuries. Current exoskeletons have reduced the metabolic cost of loaded walking by up to 22% relative to walking in the device with no assistance when assisting one or two joints.