Authors: Samuel Stearman, Benjamin Crapo, Antonio Trujillo
Mentors: Jeff Hill
Insitution: Brigham Young University
Our goal at BYU SMASH IT lab is to improve patient’s mobility in rehabilitative settings. For this purpose, we’re modeling the human arm to aid in our design of wearable rehabilitative sleeves. We are investigating methods for manipulating elbow flexion and extension using an assistive elbow brace, such as through cable-driven movement and the less used concept of tensegrity. The appeal of these methods is their flexibility, lightweight, and multiple degrees of freedom in movement. In the prototyping stage we’ve created a test stand resembling a human arm that we use to evaluate how our elbow brace would interact with the wearer and measure the forces between the arm and the brace. Measurements from these tests will aid in our design of a future elbow brace. Knowledge gained from this work has the potential to apply to other joints, each with their own rehabilitative and other uses.