A team of researchers from the Harvard John A. Paulson School of Engineering and Applied Sciences (SEAS) and Massachusetts General Hospital (MGH) has developed a soft robotic wearable able to significantly assisting upper arm and shoulder movement in individuals with ALS.
Some 30,000 people within the U.S. are affected by amyotrophic lateral sclerosis (ALS), also generally known as Lou Gehrig’s disease, a neurodegenerative condition that damages cells within the brain and spinal cord mandatory for movement.
Now, a team of researchers from the Harvard John A. Paulson School of Engineering and Applied Sciences (SEAS) and Massachusetts General Hospital (MGH) has developed a soft robotic wearable able to significantly assisting upper arm and shoulder movement in individuals with ALS.
“This study gives us hope that soft robotic wearable technology might help us develop latest devices able to restoring functional limb abilities in individuals with ALS and other diseases that rob patients of their mobility,” says Conor Walsh, senior creator on Science Translational Medicine paper reporting the team’s work. Walsh is the Paul A. Maeder Professor of Engineering and Applied Sciences at SEAS where he leads the Harvard Biodesign Lab.
The assistive prototype is soft, fabric-based, and powered cordlessly by a battery.
“This technology is sort of easy in its essence,” says Tommaso Proietti, the paper’s first creator and a former postdoctoral research fellow in Walsh’s lab, where the wearable was designed and built. “It’s principally a shirt with some inflatable, balloon-like actuators under the armpit. The pressurized balloon helps the wearer combat gravity to maneuver their upper arm and shoulder.”
To help patients with ALS, the team developed a sensor system that detects residual movement of the arm and calibrates the suitable pressurization of the balloon actuator to maneuver the person’s arm easily and naturally. The researchers recruited ten people living with ALS to guage how well the device might extend or restore their movement and quality of life.
The team found that the soft robotic wearable – after a 30-second calibration process to detect each wearer’s unique level of mobility and strength – improved study participants’ range of motion, reduced muscle fatigue, and increased performance of tasks like holding or reaching for objects. It took participants lower than quarter-hour to learn find out how to use the device.
These systems are also very protected, intrinsically, because they’re product of fabric and inflatable balloons. Versus traditional rigid robots, when a soft robot fails it means the balloons simply don’t inflate anymore. However the wearer is at no risk of injury from the robot.”
Tommaso Proietti, First Creator
Walsh says the soft wearable is light on the body, feeling similar to clothing to the wearer. “Our vision is that these robots should function like apparel and be comfortable to wear for long periods of time,” he says.
His team is collaborating with neurologist David Lin, director of MGH’s Neurorecovery Clinic, on rehabilitative applications for patients who’ve suffered a stroke. The team also sees wider applications of the technology including for those with spinal cord injuries or muscular dystrophy.
“As we work to develop latest disease-modifying treatments that may extend life expectancy, it’s imperative to also develop tools that may improve patients’ independence with on a regular basis activities,” says Sabrina Paganoni, one in all the paper’s co-authors, who’s a physician-scientist at MGH’s Healey & AMG Center for ALS and associate professor at Spaulding Rehabilitation Hospital/Harvard Medical School.
The present prototype developed for ALS was only able to performing on study participants who still had some residual movements of their shoulder area. ALS, nonetheless, typically progresses rapidly inside two to 5 years, rendering patients unable to maneuver – and eventually unable to talk or swallow. In partnership with MGH neurologist Leigh Hochberg, principal investigator of the BrainGate Neural Interface System, the team is exploring potential versions of assistive wearables whose movements could possibly be controlled by signals within the brain. Such a tool, they hope, might someday aid movement in patients who not have any residual muscle activity.
Feedback from the ALS study participants was inspiring, moving, and motivating, Proietti says.
“Looking into people’s eyes as they performed tasks and experienced movement using the wearable, hearing their feedback that they were overjoyed to suddenly be moving their arm in ways they hadn’t been in a position to in years, it was a really bittersweet feeling.”
The team is looking forward to this technology to begin improving people’s lives, but they caution that they’re still within the research phase, several years away from introducing a business product.
“Soft robotic wearables are a very important advancement on the trail to actually restored function for individuals with ALS. We’re grateful to all people living with ALS who participated on this study: it’s only through their generous efforts that we are able to make progress and develop latest technologies,” Paganoni says.
Harvard’s Office of Technology Development has protected the mental property arising from this study and is exploring commercialization opportunities.
Additional authors include Ciaran O’Neill, Lucas Gerez, Tazzy Cole, Sarah Mendelowitz, Kristin Nuckols, and Cameron Hohimer.
This work was funded by the National Science Foundation EFRI Award (#1830896), the Cullen Education and Research Fund (CERF) Medical Engineering Prize for ALS, and Harvard School of Engineering and Applied Sciences.
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Harvard School of Engineering and Applied Sciences