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

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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.