Origami Facial Reanimation Device

Facial nerve palsy affects tens of thousands of individuals in the United States every year, leaving them unable to emote on one side of their face. The current standard of care is to harvest muscles from the thigh and transplant them to the face.

We seek to develop an alternative artificial muscle that contracts quickly at definitive stroke lengths, mirroring signals from the opposite side of the face. We utilize a rectangular REBO pattern and dielectric HASEL actuators to achieve these behaviors.