Ziqi Wang

Due to the lack of physical touch, social distancing caused by COVID-19 makes it difficult to convey social intentions through handshakes. To mitigate this situation, one promising solution is to simulate distinguishable handshake patterns through haptic feedback devices during distant social communication. This paper reports a distant handshake scheme with multi-modal soft haptic gloves. To address the challenge of duplicating rich haptic stimuli of real handshakes in a compact glove, we extracted four haptic features including grip location, grip strength, skin temperature, and shaking frequency from abundant components of the haptic perception system to mimic handshake behaviors. To guide the interference-free spatial layout of multiple actuators in a limited hand-sized space, we measured the handshake contact area and grip strength of different handshake patterns, which together with the thermosensitivity of the human hand determine the grip location, grip strength, and salient thermal stimulating location. We developed a multi-modal soft haptic glove by rendering four features through pneumatic pressure, thermal, and vibrotactile stimuli, respectively. A user study was conducted to validate the performance of our glove, which set two states for each of the four features, showing over 90% accuracy in distinguishing 16 handshake patterns. Furthermore, a user study on the identification of social intentions yields the finding that distant handshakes with our haptic gloves can convey positive, neutral, and negative social intentions. These results inform the potential of distant handshakes with haptic gloves to convey social intentions in remote interactions including business, politics, and daily life in severe and post-pandemic situations, as well as in future metaverse-based society.

Dexterity and perceptual abilities of the hand are crucial in virtual reality (VR) interactions. This necessitates haptic gloves capable of accurately measuring finger movements and ensuring comfort, a challenging combination that demands both high sensitivity and stretchability. A flexible sensor fabricated from semi‐solid material CNTs‐Inkpad composed of carbon nanotubes (CNTs) mixed with silica gel is proposed and its real‐time response can be achieved by controlling the ratio. Its semi‐solid form harnesses CNTs' high conductivity and sensitivity, avoiding structural cracking in solid CNTs during extensive stretching, thus the semi‐solid form can adapt to various hand gestures. This mechanism enables the CNTs‐Inkpad to function as strain sensors with high gauge factors (GF = 16.99) and high extensibility (350%). By integrating ten CNTs‐Inkpad sensors and five vibrators, a thin and lightweight haptic glove is developed with high sensitivity and stretchability. The glove enables collaborative measurement of all finger joints required for typical gestures in VR interactions, suitable for motion detection and haptic feedback.

Background: Previous studies on homocysteine have verified higher homocysteine may adversely influence cognition performance in individuals with subjective cognitive decline (SCD), whereas the potential mechanisms for this relationship are still unclear.Method: We analyzed data from 23 individuals with SCD enrolled in the 500 nm light therapy cohort who filled the 12 items Everyday Cognition scale (ECog‐12) and had plasma homocysteine levels assessed at the time of their baseline 3T MRI scans. Gyrification and cortical thickness were obtained by using whole brain region of interest (ROI)‐based approach with the CAT12 toolbox (in SPM12). Statistical analyses used one‐sample t‐test including age and sex as covariates. Regions of significant group effects were used as regions of interest for cognitive performance analyses.Result: At corrected thresholds (p < 0.05, Holm‐Bonferroni‐corrected), there were significant negative correlations between homocysteine and gyrification in the left temporal pole (p = 0.012000) and right inferior temporal sulcus (p = 0.012268). For cortical thickness, we found a significant positive correlation of homocysteine and cortical thickness in the right inferior temporal sulcus (p = 0.032744). In addition, a significant positive correlation was found between the self‐report ECog‐12 scores and gyrification of the left temporal pole.Conclusion: Homocysteine alters local surface shape in temporal lobule in SCD patients and localized low gyrification may imply impaired self‐awareness of everyday cognition.

Objective: To review the clinical presentation and imaging findings of a 64-year-old patient with CHANTER syndrome. Background: Cerebellar hippocampal and basal nuclei transient edema with restricted diffusion (CHANTER) syndrome is a rarely described constellation of neuroradiographic findings in the setting of altered mental status. Patients typically present after being found unresponsive in the setting of polysubstance abuse. While the imaging findings associated with CHANTER (restricted diffusion in the bilateral cerebellum, limbic structures, and corpus striatum) are often harbingers of severe brain injury, a growing number of case reports have shown that patients with this syndrome may demonstrate marked clinical improvement over time. Design/Methods: Case report with literature review. Results: Our patient is a 64-year-old woman who presented to our academic tertiary care center after being found unresponsive. On presentation her GCS was 3 and her urine drug screen was positive for cocaine, fentanyl, barbiturates, and opiates. Fingerstick glucose was over 500 by EMS and she was intubated in the emergency room. The patient was admitted to the MICU where her hospital course was complicated by shock, AKI, acute on chronic respiratory failure, and persistent encephalopathy. Follow-up neuroimaging showed worsening hydrocephalus with areas of signal abnormality and diffusion restriction in the bilateral hippocampi and cerebellar hemispheres, consistent with CHANTER Syndrome. She received hypertonic saline, an EVD was placed, and she underwent suboccipital craniectomy to further relieve intracranial pressure. She was ultimately discharged on hospital day 29 with residual cognitive deficits to an acute rehabilitation facility. Conclusions: We report a case of CHANTER Syndrome in a 64-year-old woman who was successfully treated with hypertonic saline and urgent suboccipital craniectomy. This case supports the growing cohort of studies that describe the unique clinical and radiological course of CHANTER Syndrome. Disclosure: Ms. Menville has nothing to disclose. Mr. Wang has nothing to disclose. Dr. Weisbach has nothing to disclose. Dr. Tung has received personal compensation in the range of $500-$4,999 for serving as an Editor, Associate Editor, or Editorial Advisory Board Member for Up to Date. Dr. Tung has received personal compensation in the range of $10,000-$49,999 for serving as an Expert Witness for Leeseberg & Valentine. Dr. Tung has received personal compensation in the range of $5,000-$9,999 for serving as an Expert Witness for Cooper & Elliott. The institution of Dr. Richards has received research support from Brown Physicians, Inc.

Most existing force feedback gloves use rigid exoskeleton with large structural dimensions, making it challenging to meet the future demand of virtual reality (VR) applications for large-scale end users. There is an urgent need to develop soft and ultrathin gloves similar to daily gloves. Different from the idea of regulating the friction between layers, here we propose a multi-material teeth-clutching layer jamming (MateJam) actuator, which can achieve distinctive bending stiffness in free and constrained space. The actuator consists of multi-material layers whose modulus span three orders of magnitude, including flexible substrate layer, limiting layer, rigid micro-teeth clutching structure layer, sliding film boundary layer, and sealed shell layer. In free space, the flexible substrate, and the rigid micro-teeth array structure form flexible hinges, ensuring low resistance. In constrained space, the engagement degree of the rigid micro-teeth array is controlled by vacuum pressure to continuously adjust the output resistance. Reliable switching between free and constrained space is ensured by introducing the sliding film boundary layer and the optimized design of the micro-teeth cross-sectional shape. The force output ratio between free and constrained space reaches over 20 times (0.45N vs. 11.95N). The thickness of the actuator is as low as 3.8mm (clutched state), and the weight of the glove is 44.03g. The ultrathin formfactor and the low cost fabrication process makes the MateJam glove a promising solution for VR applications in home entertainment and social interactions.

This paper describes the design of a bionic soft exoskeleton and demonstrates its feasibility for assisting the expectoration function rehabilitation of patients with spinal cord injury (SCI). Methods: A human–robot coupling respiratory mechanic model is established to mimic human cough, and a synergic inspire–expire assistance strategy is proposed to maximize the peak expiratory flow (PEF), the key metric for promoting cough intensity. The negative pressure module of the exoskeleton is a soft “iron lung” using layer-jamming actuation. It assists inspiration by increasing insufflation to mimic diaphragm and intercostal muscle contraction. The positive pressure module exploits soft origami actuators for assistive expiration; it pressures human abdomen and bionically “pushes” the diaphragm upward. Results: The maximum increase in PEF ratios for mannequins, healthy participants, and patients with SCI with robotic assistance were 57.67%, 278.10%, and 124.47%, respectively. The soft exoskeleton assisted one tetraplegic SCI patient to cough up phlegm successfully. Conclusion: The experimental results suggest that the proposed soft exoskeleton is promising for assisting the expectoration ability of SCI patients in everyday life scenarios. Significance: The proposed soft exoskeleton is promising for advancing the application field of rehabilitation exoskeletons from motor functions to respiratory functions.

Force feedback gloves are promising for producing immersive haptic sensations in virtual reality systems or for intuitive control of remote robots in dexterous manipulation tasks. Existing gloves mainly adopt rigid actuators. In this paper, we propose a force feedback glove using pneumatically powered fiber-reinforced soft bending actuators. Based on the unilateral deformable feature of the soft actuator, a dorsal-side mounted soft-rigid linkage mechanism is proposed to produce fingertip force feedback. We incorporated and experimentally determined a positive pre-bending deformation of the actuator to ensure small backdrive forces for simulating free space sensation. To enable a large workspace of the glove, the soft-rigid linkage is synthesized to ensure full open/closure of the finger without any mechanical interference. Using a modular design concept, a three-fingered glove prototype is developed with a mass of 93.7g. Experimental results show that the glove can provide distinct force feedback between free and constrained space. For free space, the maximum backdrive force is 0.48N, while the fingertip force reaches up to 4.09N for simulating the constrained space. Experiments also indicate that the glove is easy to put on/off. These results illustrate the feasibility of developing light-weighted force feedback gloves using fiber-reinforced soft bending actuators.