Kinethreads: Soft Full-Body Haptic Exosuit using Low-Cost Motor-Pulley Mechanisms
summary
Kinethreads is a soft full-body exosuit that uses off-the-shelf BLDC motors with reel attachments and string-pulley routings mounted on a MOLLE vest, producing up to 120 N via up to 3x mechanical advantage. The prototype weighs 5 kg, costs ~$400, and suctions on in 30 seconds, runs about six hours on a small battery, and renders both kinesthetic forces (weights, centripetal pulls, impacts) and vibrotactile effects. Force-gauge measurements confirm mechanical-advantage scaling; continuous reeling plus encoder feedback minimizes slack; a V2 PCB adds CAN passthrough.
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chapters (9)
- 0:00Introduction by chair
- 0:24Speaker introduction
- 1:04Limitations of current haptic suits
- 2:49Kinethreads concept and design
- 4:13Hardware and PCB improvements
- 5:18Performance evaluation results
- 6:42Demo suite and haptic effects
- 8:30User study and closing remarks
- 8:52Q&A session
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