2024 Volume 2 Article ID: 117
In this study, we proposed a training method and developed a training apparatus that can maintain antigravity muscles under microgravity conditions, aiming at the application to long-duration stays in space, including exploration of other planets. The training method was focused on the action of antigravity muscles. The device was designed to reproduce an unstable posture, and to make the subject use his/her muscles to stabilize the posture. In this paper, we propose an antigravity muscle training method, develop a prototype machine to realize the proposed method, and conduct posture maintenance experiments on the whole body using the prototype machine. The target movements were the maintenance of forward and backward leaning postures using the device, and the EMG potentials of each muscle were measured during the experimental movements. As a comparison, we measured the EMG potentials of each muscle during the experimental movement while the subject was standing and maintaining a posture tilted at a similar angle. The results showed that the trends of EMG changes in each muscle were similar between the experimental and comparison movements. The results showed that the prototype was able to provide the same load to the antigravity muscles as that of gravity.
