P-26

Due to the increase of life expectancy, the number of elderly people with mild to moderate disability increases as well. Furthermore younger and more vital people can also have different degrees of mobility impairment; think of congenital or chronical conditions that can lead to mobility impairment, as well as the result of an injury.

There are a variety of different assistive devices, such as exoskeletons, to help poeple with limitations in independent movement of their legs. These assistive aids, currently available, are bulky, inflexible and expensive, and do not encourage or support the activation of the legs, since they completely take over their function.

Within the XoSoft project, the research group Smart Functional Materials is co-working on a garment, that is capable of assisting patients with mobility impairment, in a way that they still use their own muscles, to assist their leg strength and support, to increase their mobility and thereby improve their health and quality of life. It should be comfortable, washable and safe for them to wear beneith their own clothing. The focus of SFM is to develop a textile base garment that will function as a comfortable platform for the “artificial muscles”, sensors and electronics that are needed to assist the patient.

The garment was developed, using the “user centered design” method. This means user requirements and design specifications where established before concept technology development. The design was realised with the selection of technologies, which were developed based on their ability to deliver the user centered design solution. The first prototype, the Alpha, was compared to user requirements and opted as concept to possible users, Beta 1 was tested on 1 patient to mostly test comfort and donning and doffing properties, Beta 2 was tested on 5 patients. The poster will discuss the development of various prototypes.