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

针对老年人和残障人士开发的可穿戴助力装置，通过补充肌肉力量来辅助日常生活中的操作。对可穿戴电源辅助装置提出了安全性和人性化的要求。因此，采用一种体积小、重量轻、柔软的气动橡胶人造肌肉作为驱动可穿戴设备的致动器。首先，为支持基础护理工作，研制了腰部手术助力装置。通过在现有的腰部设备上安装收缩弯曲型橡胶人工肌肉来构建，阐明了橡胶人工肌肉的压力控制方法，以产生适当的辅助力。提出了利用触觉传感器实现设备与人的意图之间的通信方法。接着，研制出细长气动橡胶人造肌肉（称为肌弦）。利用肌绳作为主动支撑，研制了一种具有可变紧紧力的服装式动力辅助装置，用于腕部、肘部和肩部的操作辅助装置，并验证了其有效性。此外，确认语音输入的可用性，以控制动力辅助装置。引入神经网络来克服语音不清问题。进一步使用肌源性电压对辅助性能进行评估。考虑了小型气泵作为可穿戴助力装置的规格要求。

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.