Dr Richard Suphapol Diteesawat - University of Bristol

Research Fellowships 2025

Robotic exoskeletons have evolved from rigid constraining structures to soft exosuits for industrial and rehabilitation purposes. However, state-of-the-art exosuits are uncomfortable, bulky, ill-fitting, and expensive. Their motors and pneumatics are rigid, inefficient and have not advanced over the past two decades. Yet while current robotic clothing can monitor body health information, it is cannot yet deliver effective power assistance at appropriate speeds. No robotic clothing that is capable of full assistance exists to enhance the daily living of ageing and disabled people. Inspired by natural physiology, this Fellowship aims to engineer bio-inspired intelligent robotic textiles that will integrate advanced textile layers of robotic muscles, artificial nerves, energy-supplying arteries, and embodied computation into clothing. Building upon Dr Suphapol Diteesawat’s inventions in soft robots and artificial muscles, the project aims to create a high power-delivering textile muscle. It will change shape and stiffness and embed soft sensors to enable smart adaptation to the body, as well as monitor body motion, and optimise force transmission for high-power assistance.

Dr Suphapol Diteesawat will also develop hybrid electrical and fluidic energy harvesting and storage mechanisms for effective energy delivery to textile muscles through energy-circulating networks. Finally, the project aims to create an embodied intelligence ‘brain’ system, using advanced textile and flexible electronics manufacturing, to communicate with, and autonomously optimise control of all artificial muscles for efficient power assisting response to a user’s body. This Fellowship will deliver the critically needed fundamental technologies of future robotic clothing to improve health and safety in industry, and enable longer and healthier human living.

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