Russia has created a smart orthosis with programmable rigidity

Sechenov University has developed a smart orthosis with programmable stiffness properties for recovery from injuries and fractures, the university's press service told Izvestia. The advantages of the so-called retainer are that it can be made individually for a particular patient and the stiffness of the fixation can be varied, which increases the effectiveness of rehabilitation of patients with ligament injuries and certain types of fractures.

In addition, the product allows the skin to breathe and is not afraid of water — unlike fabric samples, you can take a shower with it, the developers said.

"Another advantage is a significantly lower cost compared to existing products and a short manufacturing cycle," Anastasia Smagina, the author of the idea, a student at the Digital Department of Sechenov University, told Izvestia.

The essence of the technology is as follows: first, using three-dimensional photogrammetric scanning, an electronic solid-state model of a limb is created. Then, in any convenient CAD program (software designed to create two-dimensional or three-dimensional graphic images) this model transforms into a shell, which is cut off along the border of the future product and transformed into a bionic mesh.

The development has no direct analogues, Smagina noted. Similar designs have been developed by foreign researchers, but their products only allow for complete joint immobilization, meaning they cannot be made in a flexible version.