ワイヤ型歩行アシストスーツが下肢関節トルクと歩容に与える影響

抄録

Along with the aging society in recent years, research and development of devices supporting the actions of elderly people and workers are being conducted. As one of these devices, we develop wire type assist suit that provides assistive torques to the wearer at the hip during walking. A key feature of our assist suit is that it has the cross-wires along the thighs. Conventionally, energy metabolism kinetics by exhalation gas measurement has been used as a method of evaluating assistance effect of the assist suit. This evaluation method, however, can evaluate changes in the metabolism of whole exercise, it is not possible to evaluate the degree of assistance the assist suit performs for each joint. In this research, we analyzed the lower joint angles, step length and the torque given by the assist suit to hip joint with the use of human body simulation software. As a result, it was found that hip joint angle has a greater correlation with the stride compared to knee joint angle and a certain assist effect was observed in the hip joint extension section. It can be expected that increasing the step length applies to rehabilitation and reducing burden on hip joint applies to assist during walking.