Florian Haufe

ETH Zurich | ETH Zürich · Department of Health Sciences and Technology

Wearable robots are undergoing a disruptive transition, from the rigid machines that populated the science-fiction world in the early eighties to lightweight robotic apparel, hardly distinguishable from our daily clothes. In less than a decade of development, soft robotic suits have achieved important results in human motor assistance and augmentat...

Background: Physical activity is a recommended part of treatment for numerous neurological and neuromuscular disorders. Yet, many individuals with limited mobility are not able to meet the recommended activity levels. Lightweight , wearable robots like the Myosuit promise to facilitate functional ambulation and thereby physical activity. However, t...

To complement the assistance of a wearable robot, users with leg weakness often rely on balance and body-weight support (BWS) through their arms and passive walking aids. A precise quantification of this arm support is crucial to better understand real-world robot dynamics, human-robot interaction, and human user performance.

Assistive robotic technology will only fulfill its potential if devices are accepted and regularly used by people with physical disabilities in their everyday life. The Cybathlon is a unique championship in which people with physical disabilities compete against each other to complete everyday tasks using latest robotic technology. The competition...

Passive spring-like structures can store and return energy during cyclic movements and thereby reduce the energetic cost of locomotion. That makes them important components of the human body and wearable assistive devices alike. This study investigates how springs placed anteriorly across the hip joint affect leg joint angles and powers, and leg mu...

Wearable robots for the legs have been developed for gait rehabilitation training and as assistive devices. Most devices have been rigid exoskeletons designed to substitute the function of users who are completely paralyzed. While effective for this target group, exoskeletons limit their users' contributions to movements. Soft wearable robots have...

Wearable robots for the legs have been developed for gait rehabilitation training and as assistive devices. Most devices have been rigid exoskeletons designed to substitute the function of users who are completely paralyzed. While effective for this target group, exoskeletons limit their users' contributions to movements. Soft wearable robots have...

Many robotic devices that are used for therapy or as assistive devices rely on pre-defined reference trajectories to assist the user’s movements. Fixed pre-defined trajectories force the user to adapt to unnatural movement patterns which may be detrimental to rehabilitation outcomes. We propose a database-driven approach to adapt the reference traj...

Knit, woven, and nonwoven fabrics offer a diverse range of stretch and strain limiting mechanical properties that can be leveraged to produce tailored, whole-body deformation mechanics of soft robotic systems. This work presents new insights and methods for combining heterogeneous fabric material layers to create soft fabric-based actuators. This w...

This paper presents design and batch manufacturing of a highly stretchable textile-silicone capacitive sensor to be used in human articulation detection, soft robotics and exoskeletons. The proposed sensor is made of conductive knit fabric as electrode and silicone elastomer as dielectric. The batch manufacturing technology enables production of la...

Intelligent, on-demand drug administration systems with controlled release kinetics may revolutionize the way diseases are treated. Typically, the release of the therapeutic payload from these systems is activated by stimuli-responsive nanofillers. However, limitations regarding large-scale nanomaterial production and poor reproducibility keep such...