On February 26-27, 2024, Mr Chen Liu, a final-year PhD student of the Robotic Systems Research group led by Dr Ketao Zhang, presented his recent work on developing a smart actuator-powered wearable finger tremor suppression orthosis [1] at the Conference of Mapping the Future of Soft Robotics for Healthcare (SoRo), London, 2024. Chen Liu's presentation was awarded the Best Poster Award of the Medical Robot Conference.

By applying various sensors, the wearable medical device can detect tremors and trigger the absorber to actively suppress unwanted vibrations, regardless of whether the fingertip is vibrating in the air or applying tremor force while in contact with an object. It offers hope to those who suffer from hand strokes and has been deemed to have a significant medical market. The work was partially funded by the Royal Society International Exchanges Cost Share award ECNSFC211324, Queen Mary Impact Fund, and China Scholarship Council (CSC) PhD Scholarship.

At the conference, researchers from world-leading institutions, including Massachusetts Institute of Technology, University of Oxford, University of Cambridge, Imperial College London, and University of Bristol, and Industry in the healthcare sector, presented their cutting-edge work on robotics technologies for healthcare.

Reference:

[1] Liu C, Zhang K. A Wearable Finger Tremor-Suppression Orthosis Using the PVC Gel Linear Actuator[J]. IEEE Robotics and Automation Letters, 2024. Doi 10.1109/lra.2024.3369492.