Flexible Printed Electrodes for FES Garments
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Solution Overview
Problem
Existing functional electrical stimulation (FES) garments for enhancing motion, particularly walking, face challenges with electrode comfort, effectiveness over time, and versatility across different stages of infirmity progression, often being uncomfortable, heavy, or poorly effective, and require multiple garments for varying needs.
Innovation Solution
A garment with flexible, articulating portions and a configuration of conductive, flexible printed electrodes that stimulate specific muscle groups, including tibialis anterior, quadriceps, hamstrings, and gluteal muscles, using a layered structure for electrode placement and a control unit to manage power distribution based on a gait cycle, allowing for staged stimulation and reduced muscle fatigue.
Engineering Contradictions & Design Principles
Engineering Contradiction Analysis
1Reliability
If traditional FES garments use tight-fitting configurations to ensure electrode contact, then stimulation effectiveness is improved, but comfort and wearability deteriorate
Solution Approach 1:
The patent employs flexible, thin-film electrode structures that can conform to body contours while maintaining comfort. The electrodes are integrated into a flexible garment material that moves with the body, ensuring continuous contact without requiring tight-fitting configurations. This resolves the contradiction by maintaining electrode reliability through flexible contact rather than mechanical compression.
Solution Approach 2:
The garment is designed with dynamic flexibility to adapt to body movements and contours. The electrode-garment system moves together with the user's body, maintaining optimal contact during various positions and activities. This dynamic adaptation ensures reliable electrode contact without requiring the garment to be tightly fitted, thereby improving wearability.
2Adaptability or versatility
If multiple garments are provided for different stages of infirmity, then adaptability is improved, but device complexity and cost increase
Solution Approach 1:
The patent designs a universal FES garment that can accommodate multiple stages of infirmity through adjustable electrode configurations and control parameters. The same garment structure can be adapted for different user needs by modifying stimulation patterns, intensity levels, and electrode activation sequences, eliminating the need for multiple specialized garments and reducing overall system complexity.
Solution Approach 2:
The garment incorporates dynamic adjustability in its control system, allowing real-time modification of stimulation parameters to match varying levels of mobility and infirmity. This dynamic adaptability enables a single garment to serve multiple functions across different stages of recovery or disability, reducing the need for multiple static garment designs.
3Productivity
If continuous muscle stimulation is applied, then motion enhancement is improved, but muscle fatigue increases
Solution Approach 1:
The patent implements periodic, cyclic stimulation patterns that mimic natural muscle contraction cycles during walking. Rather than continuous stimulation, the system applies rhythmic pulses synchronized with the gait cycle, allowing muscles to contract and relax in periodic intervals. This periodic action maintains motion enhancement effectiveness while preventing muscle fatigue by providing regular rest periods between stimulation cycles.
Solution Approach 2:
The garment maintains continuous functional benefit through seamless transition between stimulation cycles, ensuring that useful motion enhancement action continues without interruption. The periodic stimulation is precisely timed to maintain momentum and functional continuity, so that the muscle groups remain engaged in the walking motion while still receiving rest intervals to prevent fatigue.
Applied Scientific Principles
This section explains which scientific principles are used to turn an abstract innovation direction into a practical engineering solution.
Function Achieved in This Case
The garment provides effective and comfortable muscle stimulation for walking, reducing fatigue and allowing for adaptation to changing user needs without requiring multiple garments, through precise electrode placement and power management.
Implementation Method 1
at least two pairs of conductive, flexible, printed electrodes configured with respect to the articulating portion for electrically stimulating respective, or the same, predetermined muscle group(s) with respect to the joint
Data Source
AI summary
The invention relates to apparatus and method(s) for facilitating walking using functional electrical stimulation. In various aspects, apparatus(es) and method(s) for eliciting or enhancing motion of body part(s) in a human or animal body are described. An apparatus for facilitating walking in a human body comprising: a garment configured to be worn in a close fit on a leg of a human body, the garment comprising: at least one flexible, articulating portion configured to span a joint of a leg (e.g. one or more of the hip, knee, ankle and joints; a flexible, resilient fabric substrate having an inner surface for engaging a leg closely when worn; and, on the inner surface of the substrate, an electrode arrangement comprising: at least two pairs of conductive, flexible, printed electrodes configured with respect to the articulating portion for electrically stimulating a respective (or the same) predetermined muscle group with respect to the joint; further in which the electrode arrangement comprises a first pair of electrodes configured to stimulate a first (e.g. the tibialis anterior) muscle group; and, at least one second pair of electrodes configured to stimulate a second (e.g. the quadricep) muscle group or the first muscle group.