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Funabot-Upper: McKibben Actuated Haptic Suit Inducing Kinesthetic Perceptions in Trunk, Shoulder, Elbow, and Wrist

Haru Fukatsu, Ryoji Yasuda, Yuki Funabora, Shinji Doki

TL;DR

Funabot-Upper presents a McKibben muscle–actuated haptic suit that induces kinesthetic perception across 14 upper-body motions by independently stimulating joints and muscles. The authors propose a design policy emphasizing separation of joint and muscle stimuli and systemic simplification, implemented through an elliptical arrangement of 42 artificial muscles across the trunk and limbs. Experimental results show that joint stimuli yield clear, low-interference perceptions and, when combined with muscle stimuli under the new policy, achieve a higher recognition accuracy of 94.6%—a substantial improvement over the prior Funabot-Suit (68.8%). This work demonstrates a scalable approach to multi-joint kinesthetic feedback with potential applications in immersive teleoperation and assistive robotics.

Abstract

This paper presents Funabot-Upper, a wearable haptic suit that enables users to perceive 14 upper-body motions, including those of the trunk, shoulder, elbow, and wrist. Inducing kinesthetic perception through wearable haptic devices has attracted attention, and various devices have been developed in the past. However, these have been limited to verifications on single body parts, and few have applied the same method to multiple body parts as well. In our previous study, we developed a technology that uses the contraction of artificial muscles to deform clothing in three dimensions. Using this technology, we developed a haptic suit that induces kinesthetic perception of 7 motions in multiple upper body. However, perceptual mixing caused by stimulating multiple human muscles has occurred between the shoulder and the elbow. In this paper, we established a new, simplified design policy and developed a novel haptic suit that induces kinesthetic perceptions in the trunk, shoulder, elbow, and wrist by stimulating joints and muscles independently. We experimentally demonstrated the induced kinesthetic perception and examined the relationship between stimulation and perceived kinesthetic perception under the new design policy. Experiments confirmed that Funabot-Upper successfully induces kinesthetic perception across multiple joints while reducing perceptual mixing observed in previous designs. The new suit improved recognition accuracy from 68.8% to 94.6% compared to the previous Funabot-Suit, demonstrating its superiority and potential for future haptic applications.

Funabot-Upper: McKibben Actuated Haptic Suit Inducing Kinesthetic Perceptions in Trunk, Shoulder, Elbow, and Wrist

TL;DR

Funabot-Upper presents a McKibben muscle–actuated haptic suit that induces kinesthetic perception across 14 upper-body motions by independently stimulating joints and muscles. The authors propose a design policy emphasizing separation of joint and muscle stimuli and systemic simplification, implemented through an elliptical arrangement of 42 artificial muscles across the trunk and limbs. Experimental results show that joint stimuli yield clear, low-interference perceptions and, when combined with muscle stimuli under the new policy, achieve a higher recognition accuracy of 94.6%—a substantial improvement over the prior Funabot-Suit (68.8%). This work demonstrates a scalable approach to multi-joint kinesthetic feedback with potential applications in immersive teleoperation and assistive robotics.

Abstract

This paper presents Funabot-Upper, a wearable haptic suit that enables users to perceive 14 upper-body motions, including those of the trunk, shoulder, elbow, and wrist. Inducing kinesthetic perception through wearable haptic devices has attracted attention, and various devices have been developed in the past. However, these have been limited to verifications on single body parts, and few have applied the same method to multiple body parts as well. In our previous study, we developed a technology that uses the contraction of artificial muscles to deform clothing in three dimensions. Using this technology, we developed a haptic suit that induces kinesthetic perception of 7 motions in multiple upper body. However, perceptual mixing caused by stimulating multiple human muscles has occurred between the shoulder and the elbow. In this paper, we established a new, simplified design policy and developed a novel haptic suit that induces kinesthetic perceptions in the trunk, shoulder, elbow, and wrist by stimulating joints and muscles independently. We experimentally demonstrated the induced kinesthetic perception and examined the relationship between stimulation and perceived kinesthetic perception under the new design policy. Experiments confirmed that Funabot-Upper successfully induces kinesthetic perception across multiple joints while reducing perceptual mixing observed in previous designs. The new suit improved recognition accuracy from 68.8% to 94.6% compared to the previous Funabot-Suit, demonstrating its superiority and potential for future haptic applications.

Paper Structure

This paper contains 14 sections, 8 figures, 3 tables.

Table of Contents

  1. Introduction
  2. Method
  3. The Design Policy of Funabot-Upper
  4. The Configuration of Funabot-Upper
  5. The Fabrication of Funabot-Upper
  6. Control System
  7. EXPERIMENT 1: EVALUATION OF KINESTHETIC PERCEPTION BY SINGLE STIMULUS
  8. Experimental Setup
  9. Result
  10. Discussion
  11. EXPERIMENT 2: COMPARISON EXPERIMENT WITH PREVIOUS STUDY
  12. Experimental Setup
  13. Result and Discussion
  14. Conclusion

Figures (8)

  • Figure 1: (a) Appearance of Funabot-Upper. Underwear and gloves are connected through artificial muscles. (b) Two different embroidery methods depending on the embroidery width to secure the artificial muscle to the clothing surface.
  • Figure 2: (a)The arrangement of artificial muscles for inducing elbow flexion in Funabot-Suit for Upper BodyUpper. (b1)The human muscles mimicked by the arrangement of artificial muscles in Fig. \ref{['design']}(a)Upper. (b2)The human muscles stimulated other than those in Fig. \ref{['design']}(b1) (Posterior Deltoid contribute to shoulder horizontal extension and Triceps Brachii contribute to elbow extension)Upper. (c)New design policy: Stimulate the joints and muscles independently. (d)Artificial muscle configuration. It is sealed the air escape route at the endpoints using instant glue.
  • Figure 3: Configuration of artificial muscles and the definition of stimuli name. The artificial muscles of JT3 and JT4 (Trunk Right/Left Rotation) are linear shape and placed so that they spans the front and back of the trunk
  • Figure 4: The definition of the target 14 motions. Each of the motions is assigned a name. The first letter (T, S, E, and W) represents the target body part (Trunk, Shoulder, Elbow, and Wrist)
  • Figure 5: (a) Control system of suit. The filter regulator can rectify the air (blue line) from the air compressor to a specific pressure value before inducing it to the electro-pneumatic regulator. The PC can control the pneumatic pressure applied to the artificial muscles on the suit through the command line (orange line), thereby controlling the artificial muscles. (b) Time variation applied pneumatic pressure on artificial muscles.
  • ...and 3 more figures