Development of a Wearable System for Welfare Prevention to Realize a Stable Walk

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In Japan, the number of elderly people increases. On the other side, the number of young people decreases. As the result, it is reported that elderly people have to care another elderly person. In order to solve this problem, many kinds of support machines have been developed. However, with respect to an elderly person who is not physically handicapped, the bone fracture in tendency to fall sometimes becomes a big issue. For example, when the elderly people fail in a little step, some of them sometimes have trouble of bone fracture. Especially, the number of aged person who comes to keep bed increases by reason of the bone fracture of thighbone cervix in the tendency to fall.With respect to this problem, it is reported that the main cause of tendency to fall is change of gravity position with each foot. That is to say, when elderly people walk on the road, the center of gravity position moves to edge side of the sole. This is because that the angle between parts of innominate bone and … More thigh is changed by the muscle force depression of lower extremities, As the result, the elderly people are easy to stumble over.Therefore, in order to solve this problem, we propose a new type of insole. The insole is constructed with compound rubber elements that a sponge rubber is covered with silicon rubber. With respect to the element, since the sponge is coated with silicon rubber, air can be charged into the sponge chamber. As the results, it is, possible to control the stiffness of the actuator by controlling pressure in the sponge chamber. Therefore, when some actuators are arranged in parallel, the actuators can estimate the distribution of external force that acts on the actuators. Thus, by making use of control of inner pressure of each actuator, the actuator can adjust torque that acts on the insole.In this paper, we explain about the structure of insole that is constructed with the elements. Further, a test device to clear the effectiveness of the proposed insole is explained. Moreover, by using the test device an adaptive shape of the insole to distinguish between a roll motion and a pitch motion of the foot part is cleared. Thus, basic characteristics of the proposed insole are clarified through some experimental results. Less