Development of Welfare Care Elements using Sponge-Core-Soft Rubber Actuator

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In order to develop a human friendly support machine for elderly people, improvement of the interface between human and mechanical system has been becoming very important. Especially, soft mechanical interfaces are strongly required in motion assist machines for handicapped people or elderly people. Therefore, an actuator that has both active elements and passive elements attracts attention to design the soft mechanical interface.To realize these elements, we propose a new type of pneumatic soft actuator that a sponge rubber is covered with silicon rubber (Sponge-Core-Soft rubber Actuator). Further, in this study we apply the soft rubber actuator to a new type of bed element to prevent congestion of the body. That is to say, in order to clear the effectiveness of the actuator, we examine the performance of the hybrid element to develop a congestion protection mat. Moreover, both the force control performance and the force estimation performance are cleared through some experimental results. As the results, the usefulness of the hybrid element is illustrated using experimental results.Next, we apply the actuator to a body protection orthosis. In the experiment, we investigate the impact absorptivity of the actuator under mechanical shock with respect to the pressure level in sponge chamber. Through some experimental results, the effectiveness of the orthosis is cleared.