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Innovation: Robotic faces… for humans

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The design of prosthetic limbs has taken huge strides in recent years – sometimes literally. Modern prosthetics incorporate "mechatronic" elements borrowed from robotics to ensure that they are almost fully functional replacements for missing body parts, sometimes even controlled directly by the wearers' brains.

But internal prosthetics, like those used to reconstruct injured faces, have yet to incorporate such advanced features, and still tend to be awkward and unrealistic.

Now surgeons Craig Senders and Travis Tollefson of the University of California, Davis, plan to change that by using artificial polymer muscles to reanimate the facial features of people suffering from severe paralysis.

"The face is an area where natural-appearing active prosthetics would be particularly welcome," they write in a recent patent application. They believe their approach provides a solution, and report having tested it successfully on cadavers.

Changing faces

The most detailed example given in the patent document describes how these artificial muscles could help people regain control over partially or fully paralysed eyelids, after suffering spinal injuries or nervous disorders like Bell's palsy.

A person that loses control of their eyelids will struggle with social interaction and can have low self-esteem, but there are health implications too: without working eyelids, eyes can become ulcerated and blindness can eventually occur.

Tollefson and Senders suggest using the arrangement shown in the diagram, right, to address those problems. A polymer muscle anchored to the skull, labelled "41", pulls on cords that connect to the upper and lower eyelids of both eyes.

If a patient tries to close their eyes, the effort triggers electrical activity in the muscles that would normally close the eyelids. The polymer muscle detects this activity and contracts, pulling on its cords to fully close the eyelids.

Offer methods could be used to control the polymer muscle for differing circumstances, they say. If a person has lost control of only one eye (after a stroke, for example) the system could monitor the activity of the healthy eye and synchronise the actions of the paralysed one to match.

The patent also envisages using other sensors to close the eyes in bright light, or if an object moves close to the eye. Timing systems could also be used to simulate natural blinking patterns.

Senders and Tollefson think a similar approach could be used to reanimate other facial features, create an artificial diaphragm to assist breathing, or in replacements fingers and hands (see image).

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An artificial polymer muscle implanted beneath the skin could help people regain control of facial features, such as eyelids, affected by paralysis (Image: WIPO)


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