These leg bands alleviate restless leg syndrome by delivering electrical stimulation to parts of the peroneal nerve. I architected and developed the soft goods components for the bands, which meant creating an assembly that was both ultra soft and comfortable, but still allowed conductive elements to pass through the soft goods stackup to connect to exterior replaceable electrodes. This is one of the classic challenges in technical soft goods: how to visually and tactilely hide rigid components amidst a shroud of softer materials. We did this by selectively thermoforming low density foam to create higher density areas with more structural integrity, as well as integrating additional semi-rigid components that helped ease the transition from hard to soft and resulted in a pair of comfortable bands that could be worn all night.

Sizing was also a challenge here, as we had to ensure electrodes located properly over the nerve on a variety of leg sizes, and that bulky battery and MLB components sat comfortably over a fleshy part of the calf while not inhibiting knee bending.

Other fun elements of this project included a textile LED deadfront study, and personally tooling and building small quantities of high fidelity functional prototypes to enable early clinical trials.