“The work of breathing”

The new system described in the paper is modeled after McKibben actuators, which are pneumatic devices with two long, soft, and inflatable tubes.

The team modified the tubes so that they could attach to the ribcage on either side of the dome-shaped muscle and lie across the diaphragm (front to back).Each tube has a connection at one end to a thin external airline that connects to a small pump and control system.

The team can program the pump to inflate the tubes at a similar rate by analyzing the diaphragm’s contractions.”We understood we don’t need to completely copy precisely the way that the stomach moves — we simply need to give it an additional push descending when it normally contracts,” Roche says.