Development of human friendly wearable power assist device extending and supporting body operation

可穿戴动力辅助装置，通过补充肌肉力量来辅助日常生活中的操作，是老年人和肢体残疾人士开发的。可穿戴式电源辅助装置对人体的安全性和人类友好性提出了要求。为此，本文采用小型、轻质、柔软的气动橡胶人工肌肉作为驱动可穿戴设备的执行器。首先，为支持基础护理工作，研制了腰部手术助力装置。通过在现有腰部设备上安装收缩曲线型橡胶人工肌肉，阐述了橡胶人工肌肉产生适当助力的压力控制方法。并提出了利用触觉传感器与人的意图进行通信的方法。其次，研制了细长的气动橡胶人工肌肉(称为肌腱)。采用肌腱作为主动支撑器的衣式动力助力器，研制了手腕、肘部和肩部手术辅助装置，并证实了其有效性，并确认了语音输入对动力助力装置控制的有效性。为了克服语音模糊问题，引入了神经网络。此外，使用肌源性电压对辅助性能进行了评估。考虑了可穿戴式助力装置--小型气泵的技术要求。

The wearable power assist devices to assist operation in daily life by supplementing muscular power to which the senior people and the physically handicapped were developed. Safety and human friendlinese to the human are requested to the wearable power assistance device. Therefore, a small, light-weight and soft pneumatic rubber artificial muscle is used as an actuator that drives a wearable device.First, to support basic nursing work, the power assist device for the waist operation was developed. It is constructed by installing the contracted curved type rubber artificial muscles in existing waist equipment The pressure control method of the rubber artificial muscles to generate the appropriated assist force is clarified. And the communication method with a tactile sensor between the device and human intention was proposed.Next, the thin and long pneumatic rubber artificial muscle (named muscle string) was developed. By using the muscle string, a clothes type power assist wear as an active supporter with a changeable tightening force, the wrist, the elbow and the shoulder operation assist devices were developed, of which effectiveness was confirmed.In addition, the availability of voice input was confirmed to control the power assist device. The neural net work was introduced to overcome the slurring speech. Further the evaluation of the assist performance using the myogenic voltage was executed. The specification of small sized air pump the wearable power assist device was considered.