Caregiving Robots With 3D Printers Created

A new design method was found to show promise in enabling the efficient design and fabrication of soft robots using a 3D printer.

A new design method developed by Martinez and other Purdue University researchers was found to show promise in enabling the efficient design and fabrication of soft robots using a 3D printer. The technology is published in the April 8 edition of //Advanced Functional Materials. A video showing the technology is available at https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=nDpzuLbtzDM.

The world's elderly population is booming. The number of older people -- those age 60 years or older -- is expected to more than double by 2050 and is growing faster than all younger age groups across the globe.

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‘3D architected soft machines (ASMs) perform complex motions such as gripping or crawling with ease, and the work constitutes a step forward toward the development of autonomous and lightweight soft robots. ’

This trend comes with an increasing demand for caregivers capable of providing 24-hour care, not only at hospitals or nursing homes, but also at private homes and apartments.

Already, caregiving robots are programmed to ask questions a nurse would ask and can monitor patients for falls. These robotic assistants are expected to become increasingly marketable and reach 450,000 by 2045 because of the expected caregiver shortage in the United States.

"Unfortunately, the external hard structure of current caregiving robots prevents them from a safe human-robot interaction, limiting their assistance to mere social interaction and not physical interaction," said Ramses Martinez, an assistant professor in the School of Industrial Engineering and in the Weldon School of Biomedical Engineering in Purdue's College of Engineering. "After all, would you leave babies or physically or cognitively impaired old people in the hands of a robot?"

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Older adults at the end of life had an average of 2.5 caregivers assisting them and received 61.3 hours of help per week compared to others.

Recent advances in material science have enabled the fabrication of robots with deformable bodies or the ability to reshape when touched, but the complex design, fabrication, and control of soft robots currently hinders the commercialization of this technology and its use for at-home applications.

The design process involves three steps. First, a user makes a computer-aided design file with the shape of the robot. The user then paints the CAD file to show which directions the different joints of the soft robot will move. A fast computer algorithm takes a few seconds to convert the CAD model into a 3D architected soft machine (ASM) that can be printed using any conventional 3D printer.