Research Overview

I believe there are three pillars that must be considered when developing wearable systems for assistance or rehabilitation in order for it to be successfully adopted into daily life.

Functionality: The wearable device must effectively accomplish its tasks. For an assistive device, this is generally transferring adequate torque/forces to the human body.
Human-System Communication: Wearable devices are tightly coupled human-agent systems. There needs to be proper data transfer from the human to the robot (e.g., intent-detection) and from the robot to the user (e.g., haptic feedback).
Comfort and Accessibility: Generally one of the most overlooked aspects in wearable device design, If a device is too complex to don/doff or uncomfortable to wear for long periods of time, it won't be used by consumers.

Textile-based Haptic Interfaces with Integrated Actuators using Shape Memory Alloys

Coming Soon!

Bundled Liquid Crystal Elastomer Actuators with Integrated Cooling for Mesoscale Soft Robots

Anoush Sepehri, Sukjun Kim, Devyansh Agrawal, Hannah Yared, Gaoweiang Dong, Shengqiang Cai, Tania K. Morimoto

IEEE Robotics and Automation Letters, 2025 (Accepted)

In this paper, we developed a thermally-activated liquid crystal elastomer actuator by bundling thin LCE units with active cooling to overcome the traditional force–speed trade-off, seen in existing thermal actuators. To highlight the benefits of our actuator, we developed a wearable textile cuff that could generate over 4 mm of skin stretch while requiring only 1 second to cool.

Retrofitting Soft Assistive Robots with Sew-free Sensing Garments for Joint Motion Tracking and Kinematic Feedback

Anoush Sepehri, Michael T. Tolley, Tania K. Morimoto

2025 IEEE International Conference on Rehabilitation Robotics (ICORR)

In this paper, we developed a readily accessible method to manufacture sensing garments using commercial flex sensors and a sew-free heat lamination strategy. The garments offer satisfactory motion tracking (<5° RMSE), are cost-effective, and can easily be integrated into existing soft assistive robots to provide kinematic feedback or enable closed-loop control.

A Soft Robotic Wrist Orthosis using Textile Pneumatic Actuators for Passive Rehabilitation

Anoush Sepehri, Samual Ward, Michael T. Tolley, Tania K. Morimoto

IEEE International Conference on Soft Robotics, 2024

*Best Paper Finalist

In this paper, we developed a wearable soft robotic wrist orthosis with textile-based pneumatic actuators for continuous passive motion therapy, emphasizing accessibility and ease of use for stroke patients by incorporating design features to simplify the donning/doffing process. Preliminary testing showed the device was capable of over 100° of combined flexion/extension assistance of the wrist, supporting its potential for at-home rehabilitation.

[Full Paper]

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