Despite recent advances in wearable technology, interfacing movement assistance devices with the human body remains challenging. We present a stretchable pneumatic sleeve that can anchor an exosuit actuator to the human arm with a low displacement of the actuator's mounting point relative to the body during operation. Our sleeve has the potential to serve as an adaptable attachment mechanism for exosuits, since it can adjust its pressure to only compress the arm as much as needed to transmit the applied exosuit forces without a large displacement. We discuss the design of our sleeve, which is made of fabric pneumatic artificial muscle (fPAM) actuators formed into bands. We quantify the performance of nine fPAM bands of various lengths and widths, as well as three sleeves (an fPAM sleeve, a series pouch motor (SPM) sleeve as in previous literature, and an off the shelf hook and loop sleeve), through the measurement of the compressing force as a function of pressure and the localized pulling force that can be resisted as a function of both pressure and mounting point displacement. Our experimental results show that fPAM bands with smaller resting length and/or larger resting width produce higher forces. Also, when inflated, an fPAM sleeve that has equivalent dimensions to the SPM sleeve while fully stretched has similar performance to the SPM sleeve. While inflated, both pneumatic sleeves decrease the mounting point displacement compared to the hook and loop sleeve. Compared to the SPM sleeve, the fPAM sleeve is able to hold larger internal pressure before bursting, increasing its possible force range. Also, when not inflated, the fPAM sleeve resists the pulling force well, indicating its ability to provide anchoring when not actuated.

翻译：尽管可穿戴技术近期取得了进展，但将运动辅助装置与人体连接仍具挑战性。我们提出一种可拉伸气动套筒，能在外骨骼服执行器运行时，将执行器安装点相对身体的位移降至最低。该套筒有望成为外骨骼服的适应性连接机制，因其可调节气压，仅以传递外骨骼服作用力所需的最小压力压缩手臂，避免产生较大位移。我们讨论了由带状织物气动人工肌肉（fPAM）执行器构成的套筒设计。通过测量压缩力随气压的变化关系，以及可抵抗的局部拉力随气压和安装点位移的变化关系，量化了九种不同长度与宽度的fPAM带及三种套筒（fPAM套筒、文献中已有的串联气囊电机（SPM）套筒及市售钩环套筒）的性能。实验结果表明：静息长度更短和/或静息宽度更大的fPAM带能产生更高的压缩力；在完全拉伸状态下，与SPM套筒尺寸等效的fPAM套筒充气后性能与SPM套筒相近；两种充气气动套筒相比钩环套筒均能减小安装点位移；与SPM套筒相比，fPAM套筒在爆裂前能承受更高内压，从而扩大其可能的力范围。此外，未充气时fPAM套筒仍能有效抵抗拉力，表明其具备未激活状态下的锚固能力。