The design and analysis of a humanoid thoracic cavity platform

A device that can imitate human breathing movement is vital to evaluate the performance of flexible sensors and wearable equipment. It can be used to implement millions of fatigue tests with continuous movement at controllable conditions that is better than tests on human bodies. To imitate the breathing movement of humans, the pneumatic thoracic cavity has been employed in previous research. However, it has low position accuracy and large hysteresis of the driven module. To address these issues, a new humanoid thoracic cavity based on a multi-link parallel mechanism is proposed. Its morphology based on human anatomy is achieved by using the region-splicing method. The rib of the device is enhanced to promote its structural strength based on a support mechanism. The kinematics of the proposed mechanism is established and analyzed, and the kinematic model is evaluated by experiments. The tensile test of the flexible stretchable sensors and the repeated positioning accuracy test of the platform were conducted. The experimental results demonstrate that the proposed device possesses stability, reliability, and high control accuracy.