Design and optimisation of soft robotic actuators for augmented lung-ventilation

Abstract

Pulmonary rehabilitation through invasive ventilation involves the insertion of an endotracheal tube into the trachea of a sedated patient to control breathing via a ventilating machine. Invasive ventilation offers benefits such as greater control over oxygen supply, higher efficiency in supporting patient respiration, and the ability to manage airway secretions. However, this method also poses treatment challenges like ventilator-induced pneumonia, airway injury, long recovery times, and ventilator dependence. Here, we explore an alternative invasive ventilation technique using soft robotic actuators to mimic the biological function of the diaphragm for augmenting and assisting ventilation. We investigated two actuator geometries, each at two locations superior to the diaphragm. These actuators were tested on a bespoke ex vivo testbed that accurately simulated key diaphragmatic characteristics throughout the respiratory cycle. From this, we have been able to drive intrathoracic pressures greater than the 5 cmH₂O required for ventilation in a human male. Additionally, by optimising the placement and geometry of these soft robotic actuators we have been able to generate maximum intrathoracic pressures of (6.81 ± 0.39) cmH₂O.

Keywords

Lung rehabilitation / Soft robotic actuation / Diaphragm augmentation / Invasive ventilation

CRediT authorship contribution statement

Christopher Michael Hofmair: Writing - review & editing, Writing - original draft, Visualization, Methodology, Investigation, Data curation, Conceptualization. Kunal Bhakhri: Writing - review & editing, Writing - original draft. Manish Chauhan: Writing - review & editing, Writing - original draft, Visualization, Supervision, Project administration.

Declaration of competing interest

The authors declare that they have no known competing financial interests or personal relationships that could have appeared to influence the work reported in this paper.

Acknowledgements

The authors acknowledge the financial support from the Royal Society research grant (RGS\R2\222342) and support extended by the University of York in the form of an internal grant (EPSRC IAA). Special thanks to the School of PET and York Venables internship support.

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Funding

aSchool of Physics, Engineering and Technology, University of York, York YO10 5DD, UK；bDepartment of Thoracic Surgery, University College London Hospitals, NHS Foundation Trust, London, UK