Professor Jee-Hwan Ryu’s research team has developed a new soft robotic garment technology that allows clothing to assist with dressing by unfurling along the user’s body. Rather than relying on an external robotic arm to grasp and manipulate clothing, the proposed approach embeds a soft pneumatic actuation mechanism directly into the garment. When air is supplied, the garment gently unfurls along the user’s arms or legs, enabling dressing assistance with minimal effort from the wearer.

What if clothes could unfurl along the body and help put themselves on? Getting dressed is a familiar daily activity for most people, but it can be difficult for older adults, patients, or people with limited mobility. Dressing assistance is also important in hospitals, cleanrooms, and industrial workplaces, where protective clothing often needs to be worn repeatedly, quickly, and safely. However, most existing dressing assistance technologies rely on robotic arms or external devices that grasp and manipulate garments. Since clothing easily wrinkles, folds, and changes shape depending on body posture, it is difficult for robots to handle reliably.

To address this challenge, Professor Jee-Hwan Ryu’s research team proposed a different approach: not a robot that dresses a person, but clothing that helps dress itself. The team embedded soft, air-powered structures inside the garment so that the structures unfurl along the user’s arms or legs and guide the clothing into place (Figure 1).  A simple way to imagine this motion is to think of the reverse of taking off an inside-out sock. By implementing this principle with a soft robotic structure, the garment can unfurl along the user’s body and assist the dressing process.

This technology is inspired by soft robots that extend their bodies forward like growing plants. Unlike conventional robots that move using rigid joints and motors, this system uses thin, flexible materials and air pressure. As a result, the garment can gently deform when it touches the user’s body and assist dressing without applying large forces.

Movie 1. Demonstration of a sleeve-shaped structure unfolding along the user’s arm