Structure and Control of a Variable Stiffness Gel Spats for Walking Assistance

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We have developed an expansion and contraction actuator by using the PVC gel in the previous study. And we investigated the characteristics of the PVC gel actuator. We found that the stiffness of the PVC gel actuator changes noticeably with the variation of the applied DC field. In this study, we designed a new variable stiffness spats for walking assistance by incorporating the variable stiffness PVC gel actuator with the generally used spats. The stiffness of the spats is variable with the electric field on and off. We think that the spats can assist the walking by restraining and releasing the body motion with different stiffness during the walking. And we conducted experiments to evaluate the effectiveness of the gel spats. It was found that both the IEMG and %MVC of the rectus femoris muscle decreased during the walking when wearing the variable stiffness gel spats. It indicated that the gel spats designed in this study was effective for the walking assistance.