Dr. Rupal Srivastava, a CONFIRM SMART 4.0 Marie Sklodowska Curie Fellow based at the Technological University of the Shannon: Midlands Midwest (TUS) is currently working on a very exciting EXOskeleton research project:
SM-EXO: Shape Memory alloy-based hand EXOskeleton for Cobotic Applications
Rupal’s project involves the design and fabrication of a Shape Memory Alloy (SMA)-based smart glove or a hand exoskeleton, hence an add-on to conventional gloves to control robotic arm movements in real-time. The data from the kinesthetic feedback from the fingers is fed into ROS which controls the robotic arm movements based on individual or multiple finger responses. In the initial stages of the project, Rupal worked with pairing the glove with interactive toys and proposed a framework to understand cognitive development in children with Autism Spectrum Disorder. Rupal hopes before the end of her project in 2023, that she can do a human-factor study on the glove and thereby commercially manufacture and find its integration in multiple fields, especially MedTech.